Ce n'est pas l'histoire avec un début, un milieu et une fin. Comme tous les meilleurs mythes elle commence quand
quelqu'un se met, soit à y penser, soit raconte publiquement pour la première fois une histoire existante. Elle
regarde vers le passé pour y trouver un soutien à ses déclarations puis, le temps passant, spiralled hors de contrôle
au fur et à mesure que d'autres éléments y sont ajoutés. Mon intention in setting out this 'first investigation' of
the Nazi UFO mythos is to make available, in one place, the principal sources for all of the reports and claims that
seem relevant and of which - of course - I'm aware. I'm sure there will be more. I make no pretence of having done all
this work myself, or of having any kind of monopoly on the subject. If others want to use this piece as a basis for
pursuing their own research, I'll be more than pleased. If I've quoted or adopted anyone else's work without crediting
it, please accept my apologies.

Je commencerais par donner une vue d'ensemble substantielle de ce qui est probablement le seul réel mystère non
résolu de l'ensemble des spéculations sur la technologie aéronautique du temps de la guerre. This is the first of five
specific 'cores' of key material that I've concluded lie at the heart of the mythos. Having set those cores out first,
I'll deal with many of the other contributors to the development of the mythos, both deliberate and unplanned. One
brief explanation in advance - while I've almost certainly made errors of my own in translation, and the names of
people and places, I've generally refrained from correcting the spelling and grammar of quoted material. Sometimes,
style and presentation conveys almost as much as content !

Le trio began their search pattern, roaming the night skies on either side of the Rhine River north of Strasbourg
-- for centuries the abode of sirens, dwarfs, gnomes, and other supernatural characters that appealed strongly to
the dramatic sense of the late A. Hitler. However, at this stage of the European war, the Rhine was no stage but a
grim battleground, where the Germans were making their last great stand. The night was reasonably clear, with some
clouds and a quarter moon. There was fair visibility.

In some respects, a night fighter plane operates like a champion boxer whose eyesight isn't very good; he must
rely on other senses to guide him to his opponent. The U. S. Army has ground radar stations, which track all planes
across the sky, and tell the night fighter the whereabouts of any plane. The night fighter flies there, closes in by
means of his own radar until usually he can see the enemy, and if the plane doesn't identify itself as friendly, he
shoots it down. Or, gets shot down himself, for the Germans operate their aircraft in much same way we did, and so
did the Japanese.

Lt. Schlueter was flying low enough that he could detect the white steam of a blacked-out locomotive or the
sinister bulk of a motor convoy, but he had to avoid smokestacks, barrage balloons, enemy searchlights, and flak
batteries. He and Ringwald were on the alert, for there were mountains nearby. The inside of the plane was dark, for
good night vision. Lt. Ringwald said, "I wonder what those lights are, over there in the hills." "Probably
stars," said Schlueter, knowing from long experience that the size and character of lights are hard to estimate at
night. "No, I don't think so." "Are you sure it's no reflection from us?" "Je suis catégorique."
Then Ringwald remembered -- there weren't any hills over there. Yet the "lights" were still glowing -- eight or ten
of them in a row -- orange balls of fire moving through the air at a terrific speed. Then Schlueter saw them far off
his left wing. Were enemy fighters pursuing him? He immediately checked by radio with Allied ground radar stations.
"Nobody up there but yourself." they reported. "Are you crazy?" And no enemy plane showed in Lt. Meiers'
radar.

Lt. Schlueter didn't know what he was facing -- possibly some new and lethal German weapon -- but he turned into
the lights, ready for action. The lights disappeared -- then reappeared far off. Five minutes later they went into a
flat glide and vanished.

The puzzled airmen continued on their mission, and destroyed seven freight trains behind German lines. When they
landed back at Dijon, they decided to do what any other prudent soldier would do -- keep quiet for the moment. If
you tried to explain everything strange that happened in a war, you'd do nothing else. Further, Schlueter and Meiers
had nearly completed their required missions, and didn't want to chance being grounded by some skeptical flight
surgeon for "combat fatigue." Maybe they had been "seeing things."

But a few nights later, Lt. Henry Giblin, of Santa Rosa, California, pilot, and Lt. Walter Cleary, of Worcester,
Massachusetts, radar-observer, were flying at 1000 feet altitude when they saw a huge red light 1,000 feet above
them, moving at 200 miles per hour. As the observation was made on an early winter evening, the men decided that
perhaps they had eaten something at chow that didn't agree with them and did not rush to report their
experience.

Les 1944-12-22/1944-12-22, another 415th night fighter squadron pilot and radar-observer were flying
at 10,000 feet altitude near Hagenau. "At 0600 hours we saw two lights climbing toward us from the ground. Upon
reaching our altitude, they leveled off and stayed on my tail. The lights appeared to be large orange glows. After
staying with the plane for two minutes, they peeled off and turned away, flying under perfect control, and then went
out."

The next night the same two men, flying at 10,000 feet, observed a single red flame. Lt. David L. McFalls, of
Cliffside, N. C., pilot, and Lt. Ned Baker of Hemat, California, radar-observer, also saw: "A glowing red object
shooting straight up, which suddenly changed to a view of an aircraft doing a wing-over, going into a dive and
disappearing." This was the first and only suggestion of a controlled flying device.

By this time, the lights were reported by all members of the 415th who saw them. Most men poked fun at the
observers, until they saw for themselves. Although confronted with a baffling situation, and one with lethal
potentialities, the 415th continued its remarkable combat record. When the writer of this article visited and talked
with them in Germany, he was impressed with the obvious fact that the 415th fliers were very normal airmen, whose
primary interest was combat, and after that came pin-up girls, poker, doughnuts, and the derivatives of the
grape.

The 415th had a splendid record. The whole outfit took the mysterious lights or balls of fire with a sense of
humor. Their reports were received in some higher quarters with smiles: "Sure, you must have seen something, and
have you been getting enough sleep?" One day at chow a 415th pilot suggested that they give the lights a name. A
reader of the comic strip "Smokey Stover" suggested that they be called "foo-fighters," since it was frequently and
irrefutably stated in that strip that "Where there's foo, there's fire." The name stuck.

What the 415th saw at night was borne out in part by day. West of Neustadt, a P-47 pilot saw "a gold-colored ball,
with a metallic finish, which appeared to be moving slowly through the air. As the sun was low, it was impossible to
tell whether the sun reflected off it, or the light came from within." Another P-47 pilot reported "a phosphorescent
golden sphere, 3 to 5 feet in diameter, flying at 2000 feet."

Meanwhile, official reports of the "foo-fighters" had gone to group headquarters and were "noted." Now in the Army,
when you "note" anything it means that you neither agree nor disagree, nor do you intend to do anything about it. It
covers everything. Various explanations were offered for the phenomena -- none of them satisfactory, and most of
them irritating to the 415th. It was said that the foo-fighters might be a new kind of flare. A flare, said the
415th, does not dive, peel off, or turn. Were they to frighten or confuse Allied pilots?

Well, if so, they were not succeeding -- and yet the lights continued to appear. Eighth Air Force bomber crews had
reported seeing silver-colored spheres resembling huge Christmas tree ornaments in the sky -- what about them? Well,
the silver spheres usually floated, and never followed a plane. They were presumably some idea the Germans tried in
the unsuccessful effort to confuse our pilots or hinder our radar bombing devices.

What about jet planes ? No, the Germans had jet planes all right, but they didn't have an exhaust flame visible at
any distance. Could they be flying bombs of some sort, either with or without a pilot? Presumably not -- with but
one exception no one thought he observed a wing or fuselage. Weather balloons? No, the 415th was well aware of their
behavior. They ascended almost vertically, and eventually burst.

Could the lights or balls of fire be the red, blue, and orange colored flak bursts that Eighth Air Force bomber
crews had reported? It was a nice idea, said the 415th, but there was no correlation between the foo-fighters they
observed and the flak they encountered. And night flak was usually directed by German radar, not visually. In short,
no explanation stood up.

Some scientists in New York decided, apparently by remote control, that what the airmen had seen in Germany was St.
Elmo's light -- a well-known electrical phenomenon appearing like light or flame during stormy weather at the tips
of church steeples, ships' masts, and tall trees. Being in the nature of an electrical discharge, St. Elmo's fire is
reddish when positive, and blueish when negative. The 415th blew up. It was thoroughly acquainted with St. Elmo's
fire. The men snorted, "Just let the sons come over and fly a mission with us. We'll show em."

Through 1945-01, the 415th continued to see the "foo-fighters," and their conduct became increasingly
mysterious. One aircrew observed lights, moving both singly and in pairs. On another occasion, three sets of lights,
this time red and white in color, followed a plane, and when the plane suddenly pulled up, the lights continued on
in the same direction, as though caught napping, and then sheepishly pulled up to follow. The pilot checked with
ground radar -- he was alone in the sky. This was true in every instance foo-fighters were observed.

The first real clue came with the last appearance of the exasperating and potentially deadly lights. They never
kept 415th from fulfilling its missions, but they certainly were unnerving. The last time the foo-fighters appeared,
the pilot turned into them at the earliest possible moment -- and the lights disappeared. The pilot was sure that he
felt prop wash, but when he checked with ground radar, there was no other airplane.

The pilot continued on his way, perturbed, even angry -- when he noticed lights far to the rear. The night was
clear and the pilot was approaching a huge cloud. Once in the cloud, he dropped down two thousand feet and made a 30
degree left turn. Just a few seconds later be emerged from the cloud -- with his eye peeled to rear. Sure enough,
coming out of the cloud in the same relative position was the foo-fighter, as though to thumb its nose at the pilot,
and then disappear. This was the last time the foo-fighters were seen in Germany, although it would have seemed
fitting, if the lights had made one last gesture, grouping themselves so as to spell "Guess What" in the sky, and
vanishing forever.

But they didn't. The foo-fighters simply disappeared when Allied ground forces captured the area East of the
Rhine. This was known to be the location of many German experimental stations. Since V-E day our Intelligence
officers have put many such installations under guard. From them we hope to get valuable research information --
including the solution to the foo-fighter mystery, but it has not appeared yet. It may be successfully hidden for
years to come, possibly forever. The members of the 415th hope Army Intelligence will find the answer. If it turns
out that the Germans never had anything airborne in the area, they say, "We'll be all set for Section Eight
psychiatric discharges."

Meanwhile, the foo-fighter mystery continues unsolved. The lights, or balls of fire, appeared and disappeared on
the other side of the world, over Japan -- and your guess as to what they were is just as good as mine, for nobody
really knows [Jo Chamberlin, The Foo Fighter Mystery, American Legion Magazine, Décembre 1945].

Had this article not been published, then we would probably have heard little more about this unusual range of
events, in different times, in different places, which has been gathered together under the foo-fighter name.
Fortunately, others have gone on to gather more accurate, less dramatised accounts, and to make informed judgments
about the possible causes underlying the reports.

Un foo fighter me picked up à 700 pieds et me pris en chasse 20 miles down de la Vallée du Rhin," dit Meiers. "I
turned to starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. We were going 260 miles an hour and the balls were keeping
right up with us. On another occasion when a foo fighter picked us up, I dived at 360 miles an hour. It kept right
off our wing tips for awhile and then zoomed into the sky. When I first saw the things, I had the horrible thought
that a German on the ground was ready to press a button and explode them. But they didn't explode or attack us. They
just seem to follow us like the Will-o'-the-wisp New York
Times, 2 Janvier 1945, pp. 1, 4.

17 Février 1945: "Our crews are beginning to report mysterious orange-red lights in the sky near La Spezia and
also inland. These "foo fighters" have been pursued, but no one has been able to make contact. G.C.l. and intelligence
profess to be mystified by these ghostly apparitions. The hypothesis that the foo-fighters are a post-cognac
manifestation has been disproved. Even the teetotalers have observed the strange and mysterious foo-fighters which
have also been observed in France and in Belgium
[17 Février 1945, 416th historical data. U.S. Army].

17 February 1945: "At 21:30 saw reddish white light going off and on in spurts about 6 or 8 miles away, near La
Spezia at 10,000 ft. going NE. chased it at 280 MPH for 11/2 minutes. It took erratic course and faded out. At 21:40
saw some type of light 10 miles South of La Spezia and it went North and turned East of La Spezia at 9000'. Faded near
La Spezia. Pilot came within 5 miles of La Spezia, suspected Ack Ack trap. At 21:55,10 miles south of La Spezia chased
another and it went across La Spezia and pilot followed. Faded 10 or 15 miles North of La Spezia. Our aircraft at 300
MPH couldn't catch it. No ack ack at La Spezia. At 22:50, 5 miles south of Pisa, saw same light from distance of 10
miles. Chased it for 2 or 2 1/2 minutes. It took north course, disappeared over Mt. this light 10,000'. Light
described as glow that alternates between weak and bright. No contacts on Al (radar). Apparently no jamming."[17 Feb.1945. Daily Operations Report, 416th NFS, 12th
AF-SCU-01].

Cela nous laisse avec la question du chasseur à réaction Me 63. Le Second Escadron de Jagdgeschwader (JG) 400, la
première et seule Escadrille de Combat de Me 63, était stationnée à la base aérienne de Venlo dans les Pays-Bas et
saw limited action until it was withdrawn to the home wing in Brandis, south of Leipzig, in July of 1944. At
Brandis, JG 400 saw it's peak of operational performance on the 28th of September of 1944 when it was able to
scramble 9 Me 63s in order to intercept an Allied day-light bombing raid. This rocket fighter was only used as a day
interceptor for bombers, no records exist concerning the night testing of the Me 163 at the German experimental
airfield, Estelle Retime, which is where all of the experimental aircraft were tested for night flying. (Morgan,
Price, Ziegler.) Mano Zeigler who flew as one of the three chief test pilots assigned to Erprobungs-Kommando 16 and
later a Rocket pilot in JG 400 commented on the practicability of flying such a nocturnal mission in a Me 63,
"Trying to land in the dark you'd spread yourself in small pieces around the countryside!" (Ziegler p.113) This
aircraft also had an effective combat radius of no more than 25 miles under perfect visual conditions and thus
limited JG 400's operations to the Leipzig area for the duration of the war [Jeff
A. Lindell, The Foo Fighter Mystery Revised, I.U. Folklore Institute].

Lindell goes on to present information about later sightings of mysterious - and possibly responsive - lights in the
Far East where, of course, the war continued after Germany's defeat. Interesting, and broadly similar, as that
material is, it doesn't really form part of our investigation into the flight of high-performance German disks. His
careful conclusions are, however, helpful. He admits to a fairly sceptical approach to the material, but conclusions
drawn from such thorough research have considerable value. He says :

At this point it is of vital interest to relate the above terms with that of "aviator's vertigo." In May of 1946,
Dr W E Vinacke submitted the first ever report concerning folk beliefs among aviators concerning anomalous
experiences associated with flying. In his report 'The Concept of Aviator's Vertigo', Vinacke states

Vertigo is primarily a psychological problem. It appears to be associated with the mental hazards of flying, and
with the 'mysterious' events which sometimes happen in an aircraft. there is thus a two-fold source of emotional
loading in the term 'vertigo', ie dangerous conditions and unexplained, though actual, phenomena. (Vincacke p.2)

In the pursuit of fairness I have also interviewed the same pilots periodically and concerning various topics
involving nightflying. This effect has been significant. Pilots who never reported seeing foo fighters were asked if
they had experienced vertigo. The vertigo stories could easily be classed as foo fighter stories. These persons tended
to be either commanders or high ranking experienced night fighters. The point is that there are a wide variety of
"conditions" in which a story can be recounted concerning an anomalous personal experience. Persons who had not seen
foo fighters could offer no such similar experience other than a "mistaken identification" interpretation such as
St.Elmo's fire, jets, Venus, etc. Persons who had experienced "visual-vertigo" in night flying offered experiences
which are, for all practical purposes, identical to first hand experience narratives concerning foo fighters, baka
bombs, jets, Venus, balls of fire and the Jack-o'-lantern. Edgar Vinacke écrit :

Les pilotes n'ont pas assez d'information sur le phénomène de désorientation, et, comme corollaire, reçoivent
des informations particulièrement désorganisées, incomplètes et imprécises. Ils ne peuvent en majeure partie compter
que sur leur propre expérience, which must supplement and interpret the traditions about 'vertigo' which are passed
on to them. When a concept thus grows out of anecdotes cemented together with practical necessity, it is bound to
acquire elements of mystery. So far as 'vertigo' is concerned, no one really knows more than a small part of the
facts, but a great deal of the peril. Since aviators are not skilled observers of human behavior, they usually have
only the vaguest understanding of their own feelings. Like other naive persons, therefore, they have simply adopted
a term to cover a multitude of otherwise inexplicable events." (Vinacke p.5.) [11]

Surprisingly, this is probably the most thorough account of 'foo fighter' reports yet published, and I've almost
completely ignored the reports from outside the European theatre of war. There is an excellent book to be written
about the whole 'foo fighter' issue, which ideally would include the research conducted by both Andy Roberts and Jeff
Lindell. I would strongly suggest, however, that none of the 'foo fighter' evidence correlates in any objective manner
with the later claims for the existence of high-performance flying disks.

It is in the context of this statement that many writers have first considered the material set out by Vesco in the
first of his three books, often without having actually seen the book itself. Here are some key selections of what
Vesco says about the supposed Feuerball and Kugelblitz in the paperback version of 'Intercept UFO' :

another center, run by Speer and the S.S. Technical General Staff, had adopted the idea of employing "proximity
radio interference" on the very much more delicate and hence more vulnerable electronic apparatuses of the American
night fighters . . . Thus a highly original flying machine was born; it was circular and armored, more or less
resembling the shell of a tortoise, and was powered by a special turbojet engine, also flat and circular, whose
principles of operation recalled the well-known aeolipile of Hero, which generated a great halo of luminous flames.
Hence it was named Feuerball (Fireball). It was unarmed and pilotless. Radio-controlled at the moment of take-off,
it then automatically followed enemy aircraft, attracted by their exhaust flames, and approached close enough
without collision to wreck their radio gear.

The fiery halo around its perimeter - caused by a very rich fuel mixture - and the chemical additives that
interrupted the flow of electricity by overionising the atmosphere in the vicinity of the plane, generally around
the wing tips or tail surfaces, subjected the H2S radar on the plane to the action of powerful electrostatic fields
and electromagnetic impulses (the latter generated by large klystron radio tubes protected with special antishock
and antiheat armor). Since a metal arc carrying an oscillating current of the proper frequency - equal, that is, to
the frequency used by the radar station - can cancel the blips (return signals from the target), the Feuerball was
almost undetectable by the most powerful American radar of the time, despite its nighttime visibility.

In addition, the builders of the device hoped - and their hopes were fulfilled - that when the Allied flyers,
not knowing their nature or purpose, noticed that the fiery balls were apparently harmless, they would not fire on
these enormous-looking (because of their large halos of fire) "inoffensive" devices for fear of being caught in some
gigantic explosion. More than one, in fact, as they fearfully watched those huge lights close in, the American
pilots thought that some German technician on the ground was perhaps getting ready to push a button and cause the
Foo Fighter to explode.

Project Feuerball was first constructed at the aeronautical establishment at Wiener Neustadt, with the help of
the Fluggfunk Forschungsanstalt of Oberpfaddenhoffen (F.F.O.) in so far as radio control of the missile was
concerned (but was it really a missile ?) One person who saw the first short test flights of the device, without its
electrical gear, says that "during the day it looked like a shining disc spinning on its axis and during the night
it looked like a burning globe".

Hermann Goring inspecta la progression du travail de nombreuses fois, for he hoped, as in fact happened, that
the mechanical principle could also later be used to produce an offensive weapon capable of revolutionising the
whole field of aerial warfare.

When the Russians began to press on toward Austria, the construction of the first Fireballs was apparently
continued by a number of underground plants in the Schwarzwald that were run by the Zeppelin Werke. The klystron
tubes were supplied by the section of the Forschungsanstalt der Deutschen Reichpost (F.D.R.P.) of Aach bei
Radolfzell on Lake Constance, and later also by the F.D.R.P. section of Gehlberg, whose products, however, were not
as perfect as those delivered by the F.D.R.P., a fact that caused a number of Fireballs to be used simultaneously in
formation
[Renato Vesco, Intercept UFO, Grove Press New York, 1971, p.85].

Expressly identifying the reports of aerial lights known in some parts of the US Air Force as 'foo fighters' as being
evidence of the amazing, hitherto and hereafter unheard of secret weapon he called the Feuerball, Vesco sets out some
more technical details :

contained a strong explosive charge to destroy it in flight in case serious damage to the automatic guidance
system made it impossible for the operators to control it

had under its armored covering a thin sheet of aluminum attached to it (but electrically insulated) that acted as
a switch. When a bullet pierced the outer covering, contact between the two sheets was established and the
consequent closing of the circuit that operated the maximum acceleration device of the craft (generally in a
vertical direction) caused it to fly off, taking it out of the range of further enemy fire

had chemical additives (in its fuel?) that interrupted the flow of electricity by overionising the atmosphere in
the vicinity of the plane, generally around the wing tips or tail surfaces, subjecting the H2S radar on the plane to
the action of powerful electrostatic fields and electromagnetic impulses, making it almost undetectable by the most
powerful American radar of the time

I dont want to labour the point here - we could go on for a long time making fun of this nonsense - but this is
not a description of anything real. We arent told what its actual size was. We know that it had no wings, but
that it did carry a powerful engine, two layers of metal to protect it and trigger its escape when hit, liquid fuel
(lots of it, presumably), large klystron radio tubes protected with special antishock and antiheat armor, a strong
explosive charge, radio control equipment, and the absolutely mysterious devices which interfered with radio
transmissions and made it nearly invisible to radar. It must, therefore, have been a dense, heavy, tortoise-shaped
package. We can only speculate how it developed the lift not only to reach heights of 10000 to 25000 feet (the range
within which bombing raids usually took place), at speeds in excess of 200mph just to follow the bombers, and faster
to accelerate away from them.

It seems to have been radio-controlled at launch (however launch was achieved, let alone landing - were these devices
meant to be landed and reused?), and also, because otherwise why would it contain a strong explosive charge to
destroy it in flight in case serious damage to the automatic guidance system made it impossible for the operators to
control it during flight. Between 2 and 5 miles up. In the dark. Following aircraft travelling at 200mph or so,
apparently over considerable distances. We are again left to speculate how the operators knew what they were
controlling, what was happening to their particular feuerball at any given moment, or what form of radio control
could, in 1943 - 1945, work that accurately over that distance. Vesco does not address the question of how direction
or speed of flight (if the motion of an armoured wingless tortoise can be accurately described as flight) was
controlled or determined.

D'autres questions surviennent. Comment la feuerball distinguait-elle un appareil ennemi d'un ami ? Comment
s'arrêtait-elle de suivre les flammes de tuyère ? Où allait-elle lorsqu'elle s'arrêtait ? Pourquoi, when it was
travelling laterally behind the engines of an enemy aircraft, attracted by its exhaust flames, did it suddenly depart
generally in a vertical direction when hit ? Which chemical additives interrupted the flow of electricity by
overionising the atmosphere in the vicinity of the plane ? Just how did that work ? How did it wreck the radio
gear of enemy aircraft ? Where ? When ? And how, for pitys sake, could these devices ever have flown in
formation with other feuerballs ?

Those of you who actually know about aeronautical engineering - as Vesco is supposed to have done - will be able to
phrase these questions far better than I. Perhaps Vesco himself would like to put his mind to answering them: I
certainly cant. At present, though Im happy to be persuaded otherwise, and to publish any hard evidence to
that effect, my view is that the feuerball - which even Lusar had never heard of - is a fantasy. How this fantasy came
to be published, Im really not sure. But I wondered for a year or two how he had come to construct these
pseudo-technical descriptions, which originate absolutely and only with Vesco. Eventually I realised that what he had
done was to look at the few reports of 'foo fighters' that he quotes - from the 'American Legion Magazine' and
'Amazing Stories', because he didn't have the benefit of the excellent investigative work done by Roberts or Lindell -
and to build round those descriptions of the behaviour of those lights, speculative technical explanations which he
considered matched their reported performance. The only reasonable conclusion available to me is that Vesco - or one
of his obviously careless editors or publishers - put these 'technical' descriptions in his book knowing that they had
no factual basis. Passing time, the laziness of later authors, and the inexplicable readiness to believe in the
wonders of Nazi intellect has gradually turned these dumb speculations into accepted facts.

Unless strong and reliable evidence appears to the contrary, I think we can dismiss the feuerball - and its even less
defined relative the kugelblitz, to which Vesco mistakenly gave the name of a flak panzer in development early in 1945
- as objects that never had any physical reality, and were probably never even designed. I think that we could, quite
reasonably do this on technical and scientific grounds alone.

Yet Vesco continues to be highly influential, regarded as the leading authority of the Axis on secret technological
developments in aeronautics. And, given his background, his experience and his authority, as summarised in the article
in 'Argosy', what could be wrong with that ?

Had readers looked as far as the cover of the book from which these claims came, they would have found a
substantially different version of Vesco's authority to that given in 'Argosy'. This didn't say that he had, before
WWII, studied at the German Institute for Aerial Development. Or that, during the war, he had worked with
the Germans at the Fiat Lake Garda secret installations in Italy. Nor did it claim that In the 1960s, he
worked for the Italian Air Ministry of Defense as an undercover technical agent, investigating the UFO mystery.
Instead, it said that :

Would he really have "commanded the technical section of the Italian Air Force" at the age of 19 or 20, and been a
senior member of the Italian Association of Aerotechnics" at the age of 18 or 19? Surely, if he really were that
remarkable, that important, his name would have appeared in the index or references of at least one of the countless
books about the war that I've examined ? Yet it doesn't. Who was Vesco, and what did he really know about wartime
German aircraft ? Where did his material come from ?

Thanks to the highly-respected Italian researchers Maurizio Verga and Eduardo Russo, we now have clear answers to
these questions: they both know Vesco personally. As Verga says :

Vesco existe, absolument ! ... C'est un vieil homme maintenant, né en 1924. What's written by him by people like
Al Pinto on the Internet and BBSs, as well as by Harbinson, is complete rubbish. His introduction in the 1971
English translation of his first book is quite accurate, even though he was not commanding any "technical section"
in the Italian Air Force... He was an aeronautical engineer and he got an interest in flying saucers (always seen as
a secret development of man-made aircraft) in the late 40's. He published several articles (about German secret
weapons, flying saucers, aviation and other subjects) since the very early '50s, soon becoming a real skeptic
against the then-common idea of ETH visits (he commented and explained some sightings due to atmospheric or
conventional phenomena). The manuscript of his first book was ready in 1956, but he stopped publication because he
was to go abroad for a long time, due to his job. When he was back in the '60s, after collecting a huge quantity of
additional stuff, he had hundreds and hundreds of written pages, later to be turned into his three books. Vesco
claims his sources are BIOS and CIOS reports dating between 1945 and 1947, plus other military and intelligence
documents, mostly British. He told me "important persons" (I guess high-ranking officers from the Italian Air Force
and other foreign Air Forces) contributed to his research with information and documents still classified. He
promised not to make public their names, even though he says that most of them are surely dead. I know he borrowed
the BIOS/CIOS reports he quoted in his books from some Italian AF officers, through the library or libraries of the
IAF itself . . It is true he is the only aviation student who introduced the 'Feuerball' and 'Kugelblitz' devices,
at least as far as I know. Please also note that 'Kugelblitz' was a name given to other German weapons, including a
flak panzer.

The deceptive biographical information provided by Vescos various publishers has succeeded in misleading many
later writers and researchers, and in providing support for the false claims of others. Like all too many of those
involved in the world of Nazi UFOs, Vesco gave an impression of authority, and that authority was accepted without
challenge.

It now appears that Vesco was a man with an interest in man-made UFOs, who was strongly opposed to the
extra-terrestrial hypothesis (ETH), used to explain many
early flying saucer sightings. He provides, in the feuerball and kugelblitz accounts given in a book we
now know was completed by 1956, what sounds like a convincing hypothesis for explaining away, without the involvement
of spacemen and interplanetary travel, not only the 'foo fighter' reports of which he was aware, but also the very
physical sightings and photographs of the late 40s and early 50s. It is unfortunate that, in
seeking to use his knowledge of aeronautical engineering to popularise what he apparently saw as a rational
explanation for a body of irrational reports and interpretations, he only succeeded in co-founding the Nazi UFO
mythos, a living and growing belief system which, for sheer irrationality and unpleasantness, came to far exceed
anything from those innocent early days of ufology.

Les constructeurs de soucoupe

I am grateful to the carefully-presented information provided by Maurizio Verga on the UFO Online website [www.ufo.it/german] () for much of the material I have used, in this section, to try and
answer the questions raised by Lusar.

Belluzzo

La plus ancienne déclaration d'un individu décrivant la construction d'un disque volant en temps de guerre est faite
par Guiseppe Belluzzo le ou vers le 27 Mars 1950, à une époque où apparaissent un certain nombre de signalements de
soucoupes volantes dans les media italiens, et où l'intérêt européen est élevé. A cette date le journal Italien Il
Mattino dell'Italia Centrale publie, avec un dessin with a vague and uninformative line-drawing as
illustration, Belluzzo's apparent claim that circular aircraft had been developed since 1942, first in Italy, and then
in Germany. The Italian idea was, supposedly, developed by the Germans in North-East Norway. The story also appeared
in 'Il Corriere della Sera', 'La Nazione', and 'La Gazzetta del Popolo', and, in 'Il Corriere d'Informazione' of March
29-30 1950, with a comment by a General Ranza of the Italian Air Force dismissing Belluzzo's claims. It seems that
Belluzzo did not claim that the disc flew during the war but that, by 1950, it had been sufficiently developed to
deliver an atom bomb. This development was said to be some 10 metres wide, constructed with very light materials, and
unmanned.

We know something of Belluzzo's background and competence. Verga notes that he lived from November 25 1876 to May 21
1952, and was a turbine expert who published nearly fifty technical books. He was elected to the pre-war Fascist
parliament, and from 1925 to 1928 served as Minister of the National Economy. I have traced a listing for a book of
his - on turbines - full of technical drawings and translated into English in 1926. It is quite feasible that he could
have contributed to a range of technological projects, but it seems that he never claimed to have built a flying disc,
nor to have named those who worked with the Germans in Norway. As in all such reports, no viable propulsion, launch,
lift, flight, control or landing data is provided, and the criteria for publication seems to have been that the object
should resemble the flying saucers which, as ever, had caught the media's attention.

It is quite possible that a former Fascist minister would be happy to seek a little belated glory for his nation and
his regime, but for all of the later interpretations of his role in the history of Nazi UFOs his claims were very
limited, and so far as the assertion of a design for a reasonably-sized, unmanned flying disc was concerned, they are
neither unique nor implausible. Belluzzo may, in part at least, have been telling the truth.

It is worth noting that several later sources changed the name of the one individual who we can be sure actually had
some relevant technical background from Belluzzo to Bellonzo.

Schreiver

News travels fast. Verga speculates that the Belluzzo story was also published in Germany, where it would certainly
have been of great interest. Anyway, just days after Belluzzo's claims were first published, one Rudolph Schreiver
made very similar claims in a general flying saucer article in 'Der Spiegel' for March 30 1950. He, too, claimed only
that he developed blueprints, starting in 1942, which he believed later fell into the hands of the Americans or
Germans. The article first introduced a wonderfully infeasible drawing/diagram which looked like something designed by
a latterday Otto Lilienthal and, of course, lacked any meaningful technical information. This regularly resurfaces
(most recently as an amazing new and secret discovery on the Sightings website [19]) in the belief-oriented media. It
is said that drawings of flying discs were found among Schreiver's possessions after he died in the late 1950s.

It seems that Schriever described himself as "Flugkapitan Schriever", and that in March 1950 he was working for the
US Forces in Germany, delivering copies of the newspaper 'Stars and Stripes' to army bases. Vladimir Terziski, that
least reliable of sources, tries to find some glamour in this job, suggesting it was a cover for smuggling valuables
of various kinds for some Nazi underground. Harbinson says that he purported that his 'flying disc' had been ready for
testing in early 1944, but, with the advance of the Allies into Germany, the test had been cancelled, and the machine
destroyed. Initially, though, he appears to have claimed little more than Belluzzo earlier the same week. Again, his
involvement is just a side-bar to media coverage of a UFO flap. Again, it is others who have made entirely different
claims for him. After all, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to be a lorry driver.

Miethe

There is an interview with a "Dr Richard Miethe", 'German aeronautical engineer' and 'ex-Colonel', in France-Soir for
7 June 1952. I only have a transcript, in French, but apparently the paper also published a photo of Dr Miethe in his
swimming trunks.

My French isn't great, but it seems that in the interview with Dr Miethe, conducted in Tel Aviv in June 1952, he says
that he is 40 years old, gives specific details of his military background, and claims that he built a flying-saucer -
the V7 which he built in 1944, the motors of which the Russians found at Breslau. He claims that from April 1943 he
commanded a group of technicians of the 10th Reich Army, at Essen, Stettin and Dortmund, where the main research into
German secret weapons was conducted. He doesn't name any of the other six engineers he says were involved, but says
clearly that three are dead, and three are believed to have been taken by the Russians.

Not unusually, the heart of the interview is his comments on some recent Brazilian flying saucer reports, and his
opinion that if flying saucers are seen, then they will have been Russian-built from the knowledge of his three
captured colleagues. But perhaps the most important point of all is that this Miethe seems to have had nothing to do
with the USA, Operation Paperclip, or anything similar. The article says, I think, that a few days before the German
surrender he left the front to join the Arab Legion based in Addis Ababa and Cairo, where a number of Hitler's senior
officers had regrouped. At the time of the interview, in Tel Aviv, it seems that he had been ejected from Egypt, where
he says he had been working with others to reconstruct the engine with which his earlier flying disc had been powered.
The trigger for the expulsion may have been a breakdown in diplomatic relations between Germany and Egypt.

As ever, we have no idea how the saucer flew or functioned, but more than two years later, in September 1952, the
Italian magazine published some fuzzy, unconvincing photos of something looking not unlike a curling stone, on an
angle against a featureless background (those featureless backgrounds are everywhere in 50s ufology). These, 'Tempo'
claims, were taken over the Baltic on April 17, 1944, when the Miethe saucer was test-flown. The article persisted
with the assertion that the Russians had obtained the secrets of these miraculous flying discs.

Habermohl

It may be that there is another source of which I'm not aware, but 'Klaus' Habermohl seems to have made his first and
last appearance in Klein's 1953 account. Real history and science reveal nothing of his existence or his achievements.
He may well have lived nowhere but in the active brain of Herr Klein, of whose existence the worlds of science and
engineering are similarly ill-informed.

La question Lusar - résolue

The copy of German Secret Weapons of the Second World War that I read came from the British Library. It is worth
noting that it didn't have a dust jacket, which may have contained additional information, but the text of the book
itself gives no clue as to the author's background, his sources, or of any special authority or knowledge he might
have had, or of access to information that was not already in the public domain. To afford some impression of
authority, others have given Lusar various different jobs and titles by various different commentators, but as with so
many others in the mythos, there is no objective evidence to verify any of them. The simple fact is that all the
'factual' content of Lusar's section about 'flying saucers' came from the content of the newspaper comments by
Belluzzo, Schriever and Klein. He seems to have been aware of the Tempo article including the photos of the 'Miethe
saucer', but not of the earlier interview with Miethe. He has Miethe as a builder of saucers, but says he is in
Canada, and not in Egypt or Israel. He ignores the fact that neither Belluzzo nor Schriever - initially at least with
regard to the latter - claimed that discs had been built or flown. Instead, he adds Klein's claims of construction and
flight to the names and supposed background of Belluzzo and Schriever and, as he had seen the photos of Miethe's disc
in Tempo, purports that Miethe's design flew, too. Why he excluded Klein's name from Secret Weapons . . is not clear,
but because he wasn't named, he never achieved the fame of the others. Even Habermohl, whose name was neither German
nor Italian, and who probably never existed at all in the context of the development of flying discs, has achieved
greater fame than George Klein. Perhaps we can, in future, acknowledge the vital, perhaps paramount part he played in
building the Nazi UFO mythos. After all, it was Klein who decided that the high-performance wartime discs actually
flew: Lusar only gave Klein's decision lasting, international publicity.

Very few writers have made clear that Lusar actually wrote his explanation of German disc developments in the context
of worldwide flying saucer reports. Indeed, little emphasis has been placed on the fact that all of the material
published prior to Lusar's book only appeared in that context, providing a relatively local angle on reports of flying
saucers further afield. Given the total absence of tangible, objective, contemporary evidence to support any of
Lusar's assertions, I think we can safely say that Nazi UFOs did not lead to any of the reports of flying saucers from
1947 onwards. It would be far more accurate to say that the flying saucer craze led to the making of increasingly
false and hollow claims about the existence, and achievements, of Nazi UFOs.

Finally, the question of why Vesco, published in 1969, didn't mention Lusar or the Saucer Builders. The answer seems
to be that because Vescos first book (the only one of interest to us here) was completed in 1956, before the
earliest version of Lusars book appeared, and because Lusars book was published long before the actual
publication of Vescos first book in 1969, we shouldnt be surprised that their two theories of German
flying saucers are entirely exclusive: Lusar doesnt mention Vescos feuerball and kugelblitz, and Vesco has
clearly never heard of Lusars SMBH disk. There's no mystery here. There just isnt anything at all !

W. A. Harbinson et le Projekt Saucer

L'Auteur de S.-F. W. A. Harbinson a écrit une série de chunky paperbacks based on the Nazi UFO mythos. The series is
run under the overall title Projekt Saucer, the key titles relating to WWII being Inception and Genesis [Published
by New English Library, London]. I find his writing interesting and often quite exciting, though the accounts
of violence and cold Nazi ruthlessness can be a little strong for my taste. Were these books sold only as fiction,
they'd be of little interest to us here.

However, not only do the novels include an 'Author's Note' which suggests that the author's own research has
established a factual basis to his 'fiction', but he has also published a non-fiction book , Projekt UFO. The blurb on
the back says :

The book extends well beyond the end of WWII, and for the most part it deals with the usual post-war questions
regarding the reality of UFO sightings, the development of terrestrial technologies, and key cases, such as Socorro.
It also introduces - in Harbinson's Foreword - the 'Brisant' document, one of the truly great ufological red herrings
:

En Mai 1978, at Stand 111 in a scientific exhibition in the Hanover Messe Hall, some gentlemen were giving away
what at first sight appeared to be an orthodox scientific newspaper called Brisant. The paper contained two
seem-ingly unrelated articles: one on the scientific and ecological value of the Antarctic, the other about a
Ger-man World War II flying saucer construction project, nommé "Projekt Saucer".

The first article, written from a neo-Nazi standpoint, included a suggestion that West Germany should claim back
their right to Queen Maud Land in the Antarctic, which the Nazis stole from the Norwegians during World War II and
renamed Neu Schwabenland. The second article, which asserted that the German scientists were the first, but not the
only ones, to construct highly advanced saucer-shaped aircraft, was accompanied by reproductions of technical
drawings 6f a World War II flying saucer.

The unnamed author failed to name the designer of the flying saucer and claimed that the drawings had been
altered by the West German government to render them 'safe' for publication. Adding weight to his claim, he also
pointed out that during World War II all such inventions, whether civilian or military, would have been submitted to
the nearest patent office where, under paragraphs 30a and 99 of the Patent-und Straf8ezetsbuch, they would have been
routinely classified as 'secret.' After being confiscated and passed on to one of Himmler's many 55 research
establishments, at the end of the war they would perhaps have disappeared into secret Soviet files, or into equally
secret British and US files, or lost with 'missing' German scientists and SS troops.

The rest of the article was just as intriguing. It claimed that throughout the course of World War II the
Germans sent ships and planes to Queen Maud Land, or Neu Schwa-benland, in the Antarctic, with equipment for massive
underground complexes, similar to those they had con-structed in Thuringia and the Harz Mountains in Germany. It
said that at the end of the war some of the scientists and engineers who had worked on Projekt Saucer escaped from
Germany by submarine and ended up in an underground base in the Antarctic, where they continued to construct even
more advanced flying saucers, and that the Americans and Soviets, upon learning about this, then used their captured
German scientists and technical papers for the secret construction of their own flying saucers[Harbinson, W A (1995) Projekt UFO - The Case for Man-Made
Flying Saucers Boxtree London, Foreword].

Harbinson while researching 'Genesis' paid a visit to the semi-Northern city of Hannover in the late 70's. It
was here that he reportedly attended a science lecture exhibition at the 'Hannover Messe Hall'. Whilst looking
around the hall, Harbinson arrived at stand number 111, it was here that he was handed a magazine called
"Brisant"[Mark Ian
Birdsall, 1988? The Ultimate Solution Self-published p.13].

I wrote to Harbinson via his publishers to ask for further information about 'Brisant', because it is clearly - if it
ever actually existed - a key document in the development of the mythos. Henry Stephens of the German Research Project
(see below) offers copies of what he says are some pages, and claims that the originals of 'Brisant' were lost by
Harbinson's publishers: so I asked about that, too. Unfortunately, I received no response, so the authority and
provenance of 'Brisant' remain unknown.

Harbinson seems to have been inspired by the content of the paper, despite the implausibility of the bit about the
patent office and the plans having been "altered by the West German government to render them 'safe' for publication".
That sounds more like an excuse for the technical infeasibility which afflicts every diagram of discs in the mythos.
Undeterred, Harbinson continues :

During my two years of intensive research, I uncovered written and photographic evidence which proved beyond
doubt that Nazi Germany had in fact initiated a research programme for the development of saucer-shaped aircraft. I
found that at the close of the war seasoned Allied pilots were sub-mitting official reports about harassment by
'balls of fire' that tailed them and made their aircraft and radar mal-function. In addition, one of the leading
members of Germany's Projekt Saucer development team disappeared into the Soviet Union and another went to work with
Ger-man rocket expert, Wernher von Braun, for NASA in the United States...

My research also uncovered articles about man-made flying saucers, in-cluding the German Kugelblitz and the
Canadian AVRO-Car prototype published not only by the 'lunatic' fringe but by highly respected aeronautical
magazines such as Lufthahrt International, the Royal Air Force Flying Review, and the US News and World Report. So,
flying saucers, whether primitive or highly advanced, were certainly constructed in Nazi Germany and post-war
Canada, in the latter case with the aid of the United States.

In 1980, my 615-page novel, Genesis, based on a mass of research material, including that mentioned above, was
published. It became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, eventually becoming a 'cult' book, and is still in
print ten years after its publication. Reviewing the novel on its publication in the United States, Publishers
Weekly said: 'Harbinson has drawn so heavily on factual material and integrated it so well into the text that the
book begins to read like non-fiction...[Harbinson
op cit p.5].

That Publishers Weekly was so impressed says much for the quality of Harbinson's writing, but little for his
research. In his chapter 'Technology and Sightings of World War II' we find a familiar statement, with a few added
details :

Renato Vesco was an aircraft engineer specializing in aerospace and ramjet developments. Educated before World
War II at the University of Rome, he then studied aeronautical engineering at the German Institute for Aerial
Development. During the war, he was sent to work with the Germans at Fiat's immense underground installations at
Lake Garda, near Limone in northern Italy, where he helped in the production of aeronautical devices that were
tested at the Hermann Goering Institute of Riva del Garda. After the war, in the 1960s. Vesco worked for the Italian
Air Ministry of Defence as an undercover tech-nical agent, investigating the UFO phenomenon[Harbinson
op cit p. 61].

Harbinson accepts Vesco's claims without further ado, and then goes on, in his chapter 'Division of the Scientific
Spoils of War', to accept Lusar, too, saying :

An article about 'Projekt Saucer' was later published in the indispensable volume, German Secret Weapons of the
Second World War (1959) by Major Rudolph Lusar, and in-cluded reproductions of the flying saucer drawings of
Schriever and Miethe[Harbinson op cit p. 72].

Harbinson sets out more of Lusar's material, and then reports, helpfully, some research of his own :

Schriever's recollection of the test flight date is contra-dicted in certain details by alleged eye witness
Georg Klein, a former engineer with Albert Speer's Ministry for Armament and Ammunition, who told the press that he
had actually seen the test flight of the Schriever disc, or one similar, near Prague on 14 February 1945. A certain
doubt may be cast on Klein's date, since according to the War Diary of the 8th Air Fleet, 14 February 1945 was a day
of low cloud, rain, snow and generally poor visibility - hardly the conditions for the testing of a revolutionary
new kind of aircraft.

One of those who may have been involved in the actual Projekt Saucer is Heinrich Fleischner, of Dasing, Augsburg in
the Federal German Republic. Interviewed for the 2 May 1980 edition of Neue Presse magazine, Fleischner, who was then
seventy-six, claimed that he had been a technical consultant on a jet-propelled, disc-shaped aircraft that had been
constructed by a team of technicians in Peenemunde, though the parts had been built in many other places. According to
Fleischner, Hermann Goering had been the patron' of the aircraft and had planned to use it as a courier plane. At the
end of the war, the Wehrmacht des-troyed most of the plans and a few of the 'unimportant' drawings fell into the hands
of the Russians.

Hermann Klaas, from Muhlheim, West Germany, a bio-technician specializing in aerodynamic phenomena, was another who
claimed to have worked on various remote-controlled models for disc-shaped aircraft during World War II. The most
common model was 2.4 metres in diameter and propelled by an electro-engine supplied by the Luftwaffe. According to
Klaas, these models were simi-lar to those then being developed by Schriever, Haber-mohl, Miethe, and Belluzzo in
Bohmen (Czechoslovakia) and Breslau (now Wrocklaw, Poland) [Harbinson op cit p. 74].

Overall, bearing in mind the quality of most of his sources, Harbinson's research is better than most: it takes a
while to realise that the world of ufology is full of dreams, misapprehensions and outright lies. For me, though, why
the Germans would have called their enterprise 'Projekt Saucer' is a mystery in itself. The drawings produced during
the 1950s, and even in the hypothetical 'Brisant', in no way resemble saucers, 'saucer' is not a German word, and the
term 'flying saucers' didn't appear until 1947 when a journalist mistook Kenneth Arnold's description of the way
unidentified objects moved in the air over the Cascade Mountains for a description of what they looked like. Maybe
this is what they call artistic licence, fine for fiction, but distinctly out of place if it's conveyed as the truth.
I have no hesitation in concluding that there was no 'Projekt Saucer' in the real world, and that Harbinson has,
presumably quite inadvertently, made a major contribution to the development of the mythos.

Vril, Haunebu et le voyage interplanétaire

Vladimir Terziski

One of the few references that I haven't managed to find before writing this piece is a book, probably from 1993,
called Close Encounters of the Kugelblitz Kind, by Vladimir Terziski. Terziski first appeared in or around that year,
claiming to be the "President, American Academy of Dissident Sciences, 10970 Ashton Ave. #310, Los Angeles, CA
90024, USA. When I wrote to the Academy asking for further information, my letter was returned, the Academy not
being known at the address. He also claims that he is "a Bulgarian born engineer and physicist, graduated Cum Laude
from the Master of Science program of Tokai University in Tokyo in 1980. Served as a solar energy researcher,
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, before immigrating to the US in 1984." [29]

Terziski seems, with a little help from Al Bielek of the completely loopy 'Montauk Project', who was co-founder of
the Academy, to have introduced a completely new strand of 'Nazi UFO' material. It also appears in one of the series
of Montauk Project books. It is so outrageously unbelievable, implausible, and devoid of supporting evidence that it
has proved to be very popular among those who believe in an Illuminati conspiracy, the New World Order, and the links
between our rulers and Reptilian Aliens. The last trace I've found of Terziski is at a speaker at a 'patriot' meeting
in 1998, but his influence lives on, creating an alternative, revised history in which the Nazis won in the end.

Ever since their first day of landing on the Moon, les allemands commencèrent à boring et tunneling sous la
surface, et à la fin de la guerre il y avait une petite base de recherche nazie sur la Lune. The free energy tachyon
drive craft of the Haunibu-1 and 2 type were used after 1944 to haul people," materiel and the first robots to the
construction site on the Moon. When Russians and Americans secretly landed jointly on the Moon in the early fifties
with their own saucers, they spent their first night there as guests of the... Nazi underground base...

D'après les auteurs du film documentaire allemand underground de la Société de Thule (presumably "UFO Secrets of
the Third Reich", que Terziski aurait produit lui-même - KM), le seul appareil produit de type Haunibu-3 - the 74
meter diameter naval warfare dreadnought - fut choisit pour la mission la plus courageuse de tout le siècle - le
voyage vers Mars. The craft was of saucer shape, had the bigger
Andromeda tachyon drives, and was armed with four triple gun turrets of large naval caliber (three inverted upside
down and attached to the underside of the craft, and the fourth on top of the crew compartments).

RFZ-6 (Haunebu II). Travail commence avant la fin de 1942. Des formes diverses, de 85 à 100 pieds de diamètre
et 30 à 36 pieds de haut, sont produites. A 3200 knot speed is assigned, making for near-space capability. One plan
shows a Donar Ray Gun (!) in a turret on the underside. Some had sleeping quarters. a deep-space variant was said to
be 234 feet in diameter. At least one side-view drawing with data survives and it bears an uncanny resemblance to an
orthographic projection which has been made from the famous Adamski and Darbishire UFO photographs.

Haunebu III. An SS E4-planned deep-space disc craft. Various photographs show design variations. Over 400 feet
in diameter. A side view drawing with data survives. Reportedly, U.S. found none. A Haunebu IV also is reported.

Andromeda Project A large craft planned by SS E4 for interstellar travel, Over 100 ton capacity. 360 feet
long

Autres appareils :

These types may have combined what we now consider known and unknown physics. The Vril craft were of 20 to 40 feet
in diameter.

RFZ7T. Work began in 1942 on a discus craft by Miethe, Joined by Bellonzo then Schreiver and Habermohl. A
"reliable, functional light craft".

Vril I. A 36 foot single seat craft, which was armed and tested before the end of 1942. Flew 7000 mph from its
Brandenburg test site. Could instantly change direction.

Vril II. An air-water motor in the center of the craft spun rapidly like a tornado, thus according to
Schauberger's implosion principle, neutralizing gravity, as with the Vril I craft. diameter also similar. Vril VII
and Vril IX also reported.

Branton est un gars qui a été impliqué dans les enlèvements depuis son
enfance [generational family stuff], MANY of which involved Alien/CIA agendas in the underground bases. Il fut
"programmé" EN TANT qu'une personalité altérée, ou un "agent dormant" par la CIA and has interacted with underground
bases and especially Dulce WHILE IN THE altered state of consciousness. Many abductees will tell you that during
abductions their "conscious mind" seems to switch off and another "personality" that is programmed by the alien
agenda kicks in. These alternate identities are individuals in a sense, but also are linked to the alien collective
which is how Branton gets much of his information, literally "hacking the
hive"... having spent years being manipulated by the alien group-mind he has now turned it around WITH God's help
and is using it as a weapon against them, although you'll never know how painful it has been for him... a literal
hell... but having taken up the "cross" as his sword and shield he is prevailing against the "beast", just like
"Saint" George the Dragon slayer of old you might say. Branton fut "saved" [renaissance] en 1985 et le "Branto alter
ego" est apparemment toujours impliqué dans les underground scenarios on a nocturnal basis, trying to put together a
literal "underground resistance" movement, both in the underground bases and above. This resistance movement
involves freedom fighter forces within certain military bases, several "hybrids" [many his own 'kids'], Nordics,
Telosians, several of "the orange" group, and even some of the Sasquatch type aliens... Branton's
testimony

These biographical details may make Branton's willingness to accept
Terziski's claims as true. Branton reports :

Bien que cela puisse paraître assez incroyable, Terziski déclare posséder des informations confirmant, telles
que "...la première exposition video d'ovnis Nazi. Des atterrissages de soucoupes allemandes/japonaises sur la Lune
et Mars en 1944-46, l'atterrissage du coup de Marconi sur Mars en 1956... une séquence video de Nazi interplanetary
dreadnoughts et de soucoupe américano-soviétique atterrissant sur Mars." Although many of the 'Greys' have been
described as being of neo-saurioid configuration, other 'Greys' pose a different mystery as to their origin and seem
to be more of a bio-synthetic or 'manufactured' configuration. Vladimir Terziski suggests that some of these greys
may be "...a product of the US government's biogenetic cyborg R&D program[Branton
- Omega Files].

430000 Allen Dulles de la CIA [Bavarian Illuminati] cuts a deal with
Nazi SS intelligence. This would eventually lead to a massive infiltration of the CIA by Nazi S.S. agents, who would in turn begin a global program of toppling third
world governments and replacing them with their own fascist puppet dictatorships. Germans complete research on alloy
of magnesium and aluminum.

440000 L'Agent de l'OSS Douglas Bazata receives contract on General George
Patton's life. Feuerball aircraft constructed at aeronautical factory at Wiener Neustadt. Germans test
Bellonzo-Schriever-Meithe designs based on Coanda disk.

440300 Wilson* replaces German saucer [rotor] propulsion with advanced jet
propulsion. *('Wilson' is presumably the fictional character in the 'Project Saucer' novels of W A Harbinson, who
has somehow crossed over into Branton's version of reality)

450223 Perfected engines removed from Kugelblitz and sent to polar base.
Kugelblitz, minus engines, blown up by SS personnel to prevent the design from falling into the hands of the Allies.

450225 Workers at Kahla complex brought to Buchenwald and gassed so as not
to reveal secret of Nazi disk projects. Kahla closed. Slavian slave-laborers from various underground facilities
also taken to Karshagan and other camps and killed.

Histoires fausses

We have at least one outright hoax in foo-fighter lore. For years rumours had been flying round that the
Germans had been fully aware of the foo-fighter phenomenon and that they had a special study group formed to look into
the problem under the name of "Project Uranus", backed by a shadowy group by the name of Sonderburo 13. This was first
detailed in Le Livre Noir Des Soucoupes Volantes (1970) par l'ufologue français Henry Durrant. The rumour spread in Europe and eventually took physical form in
the English language in Tim Good's acclaimed book Above Top Secret where it is used to help substantiate further vague
rumours of an Anglo/American foo-fighter study. Good had not checked his facts and had in fact just copied the
information direct from Durrant's book.

During the bomb run of several groups, starting at about the time the Fortresses approached the Initial
Point, there occurred one of the most baffling incidents of World War II, and an enigma that to this day defies all
explanation." "As the bombers of the 384th Group swung into the final bomb run after passing the Initial Point, the
fighter attacks fell off. This point is vital, and pilots were queried extensively, as were other crew members, as to
the position at that time of the German fighter planes. Every man interrogated was firm in his statement that "at the
time there were no enemy aircraft above.

At this moment the pilots and top turret gunners, as well as
several crewmen in the Plexiglas noses of the bombers, reported a cluster of discs in the path of the 384th's
formation and closing with the bombers. The startled exclamations focused attention on the phenomenon and the crews
talked back and forth, discussing and confirming the astonishing sight before them.

The discs in the
cluster were agreed upon as being silver colored, about one inch thick and three inches in diameter. They were easily
seen by the B-17 crewmen, gliding down slowly in a very uniform cluster." "And then the `impossible' happened. B-17
Number 026 closed rapidly with a number of discs; the pilot attempted to evade an imminent collision with the objects,
but was unsuccessful in his maneuver. He reported at the intelligence debriefing that his right wing "went directly
through a cluster with absolutely no effect on engines or plane surface.

The intelligence officers
pressed their questioning, and the pilot stated further that one of the discs was heard to strike the tail assembly of
his B-17, but that neither he nor any member of the crew heard or witnessed an explosion." "He further explained that
about twenty feet from the discs the pilots sighted a mass of black debris of varying sizes of clusters of three by
four feet." "The SECRET report added: `Also observed two other A/C flying through silver discs with no apparent
damage. Observed discs and debris two other times but could not determine where it came from.

No further
information on this baffling incident has been uncovered, with the exception that such discs were observed by pilots
and crew on missions prior to, and after, Mission 115 of October 14, 1943[Caidin,
Martin (1960) Black Thursday].

Une lettre au MoD à leur Branche Historique de l'Air n'aboutit à rien,
suggérant que either of the documents may be held at the Public Records Office at Kew, London. Un chercheur
professionnel fut despatched to try to find the document. She searched all relevant Air Force records available (some
are still bound by various `rules' with embargoes on viewing of up to 100 years) but could find nothing, despite the
help of staff there and noting that "the reference FLO etc. does not correspond with any references at the record
office.

Aux USA, Dennis Stacy (alors rédacteur-en-chef du UFO Journal du MUFON) had taken an
interest in the case and followed up several leads, aided by the Freedom of Information Act. Firstly the A.F.
Historical Research centre at Maxwell AFB searched their 8th A.F. files but could come across no documentary record of
the event (interestingly enough I tried the same source and whilst they gave me squadron histories of the 415th Night
Fighter squadron and their documented foo-fighter sightings, they could provide nothing on the Schweinfurt raid -- odd
if the Schweinfurt events were real).

Les Archives Nationales (Washington) searched their files but
drew a blank. Une lettre écrite au chercheur français J. M. Bigorne des
Archives Nationales indiquait "A search in records of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), European
War, Target Damage File, 11a (2606), Schweinfurt, failed to disclose any documentation or information regarding little
flying discs by B-17 pilots." All this presents us with a quandary. If the Archives are quite free about some
foo-fighter info why, if it exists at all, should they be that bothered about concealing the Schweinfurt material? So
far three independent researchers over the past ten years have had the same answer -- none of the flight records for
that day record the event in Caidin's book. As I have seen other pilots' logs which mention unusual UFO-type sightings
during missions it would be inconceivable for at least a few aircrew on that raid to have mentioned it even in passing
- especially as in this case it was obviously something of an item at de-briefing.

Letters in
numerous aircrew magazines (UK & US) requesting info on the raid were placed and despite many replies no-one knew
anything. Aviation writers Martin Middlebrook and Chaz Bowyer who have written many highly detailed books about the
air war, and have interviewed thousands of aircrew, wrote to say they had never heard of the incident, despite having
had foo-fighters mentioned to them in other contexts.

Dennis Stacy contacted the 384th Bombing Group
survivors association and with no account of the UFO sighting forthcoming from them was put onto General Theodore Ross
Milton who led the raid that day and went in first with the 91st Group Formation. He wrote; "I don't recall seeing
black discs or hearing about any strange phenomena from any of my group[Roberts,
Andy 'In search of "Foo-Fighters"' in UFO Brigantia No.66 July 1990].

Martin Caidin, originator of the rumour also presents problems. His book Black Thursday was first published in
1960 and yet quotes an alleged SECRET report. How did he get hold of it then and why has it not been seen since? As
for Caidin himself, several people have tried to get in touch with him without success. Both myself and (then) MUFON
Journal editor Dennis Stacy have tried to track him down via his publishers and a UFO magazine he has written for,
but to no avail. He last appeared in the dodgy US magazine UFO Universe where he was featured on the front page as
having 'chased bogies at 20000 feet,' (an astonishing spectacle no doubt!), but whilst the article gave details of
UFOs he'd seen post-WWII, government film of UFOs, cover-ups, and you name it (along with mucho promotion for his
many books, including UFO based novels) the Schweinfurt raid was never mentioned. Funny that, really[Roberts, Andy Ibid].

However, with the terrier-like tenacity for which he is renowned, Roberts kept searching, and in September 2000
finally found, in the Records Office at Kew :

The document which Caidin obviously based his account on. It reads as follows. All spelling and punctuation is in the
original. The file in which the document can be found is: AIR 40/464. At the top right of the document is a rubber
stamp giving details of circulation to:

306 Group reporta partially unexploded 20mm shell imbedded above the panel in the cockpit of A/C number 412 bearing
the following figures 19K43. The Group Ordnance Officer believes the steel composing the shell is of inferior grade.
348th Group reports a cluster of disks observed in the path of the formation near Schweinfurt, at the time there were
no E/A above. Discs were described as silver coloured - one inch thick and three inches in diameter. They were gliding
slowly down in very uniform cluster. A/C 026 was unable to avoid them and his right wing went directly through a
cluster with absolutely no effect on engines or plane surface. One of the discs was heard striking tail assembly but
no explosion was observed. About 20 feet from these discs a mass of black debris of varying sizes in clusters of 3 by
4 feet. Also observed 2 other A/C flying through silver discs with no apparent damage. Observed discs and debris 2
other times but could not determine where it came from.

Copies to:-

P.R. & A.I.6. D.B.Ops War Room D.A.T. A.I.3. (USA) (Action 2 copies)

"Presumably Caidin must have seen a copy of this document from one of the American recipients . . . The Rubber stamp
clearly states it was received on 17 October, pre-dating Caidin's reference by seven days. But the sheer number of
channels through which documents went could be the reason for this confusion and now the original document has been
located I don't think we need get hung up on the original reference any more. I have found no record of most of the
personnel listed. However a Squadron Leader Heath was involved in the UK's investigations of the Scandinavian 'ghost
rockets' in 1946."

Il conclut :

At least we now know Caidin's reference exists! Besides that there is little to say really. Les objets signalés
sont intriguants mais pas complètement mystifying. There were many types of flak being used by the Germans in W.W.II
and several files in the PRO refer to coloured flak, flak which threw off unusual fragments, and so on. This
explanation is made more likely by the fact that the 'F.L.O.' in Caidin's reference stands for 'Flak Liaison
Officer', at least suggesting that the Air Ministry were treating it within a flak context. The objects could also
have been some kind of 'window' dropped by the Germans in an attempt to disrupt radar or radio communication among
air crew. The explanation as to what the small objects were is now more of a task for the air historian than it is
for the ufologist. What is clear from the original account is that the discs, whilst unusual, were clearly not any
type of 'craft', under intelligent or purposeful control or dangerous to the air craft or crew.

In my opinion these objects do not belong in the category of sightings referred to as 'foo-fighters', both by
their physical description and by their behaviour and characteristics. Although often lumped in with foo-fighter
reports they are clearly different. This story has been a staple of UFO writers for the past three four decades. Now
we have further clarification and I believe that this particular mystery is more or less laid to rest.

Andy Roberts is more charitable to Caidin's exaggerated and redefined version of the report than I, but Caidin is
nowhere near as foolish as those who put together the second block (1998 release) of 'Majestic 12' documents.
Nevertheless, Nick Redfern and Jonathan Downes present a copy of a section of these silly documents, which says :

Aerial interference with military aircraft has demonstrated the ability to observe our air operations in war and
peacetime conditions. During the war over 900 near-miss incidents were reported by allied pilots and crews in all
theater of operations. One of the most dramatic near-miss encounters occurred on 14 October 1943, 8th AF Mission 115
over Schweinfurt, Germany, B-17 crews reported many formations of silvery discs flying down into the B-17
formations. Several times during the bombing mission, large objects were seen following the discs descent into the
formations. Unlike previous reports, no engine failures or airframe damage was reported. After the surrender of Nazi
Germany, GAF fighter pilots were interrogated by AF intelligence concerning Mission 135. GAF did not have any
aircraft above our bombers at that time[Redfern, N and Downes, J Ibid p.62].

En ce qui concerne le gouvernement britannique, il y a de fortes preuves to show that extremely rigorous
investigations were made into the Foo Fighter phenomenon by an elite team of Air Ministry and Royal Air Force operatives[N. Redfern et J. Downes,
Ibid p.62].

Si... les données relatées dans les memoranda officiels du FBI des années 1940s,
1950s et 1960s sont exactes, how were the Nazis able to develop technology that, years later, was still defying
America's finest" As I will later show, il y a firm grounds à croire qu'un certain nombre de véhicules
extra-terrestries écrasés sur terre sur le sol des US à la fin des années 1940s. Is it stretching the bounds of
possibility to speculate that a similar event may have occurred on Nazi territory several years previously? If such
an event did take place, and the Germans were able to grasp the rudiments of the technology, this would perhaps go a
long way towards explaining their pressing desire to perfect a man-made flying saucer. The truth may ultimately turn
out to be far stranger than has previously been realised[Redfern op cit p.210].

Well, yes, it really does stretch the bounds of possibility, but that doesn't stop Corso from reporting, in The
Day After Roswell, what he and General Twining had wondered about after inspecting the crashed saucer at Roswell :

At the very least, Twining had suggested, the crescent-shaped craft looked so uncomfortably like the German
Horten wings our flyers had seen at the end of the war that he had to suspect the Germans had bumped into something
we didn't know about. And his conversations with Wehrner von Braun and Willy Ley at Alamogordo in the days after the
crash confirmed this. They didn't want to be thought of as verruckt but intimated that there was a deeper story
about what the Germans had engineered. No, the similarity between the Horten wing and the craft they had pulled out
of the arroyo was no accident. We always wondered how the Germans were able to incorporate such advanced technology
into their weapons development in so short a time and during the Great Depression. Did they have help? With an
acceleration capability and maneuverability we'd never seen before, this craft would keep American aircraft
engineers busy for years just incorporating what you could see into immediate designs
[Corso, Col. Philip J., with Birnes, William J. (1997) The Day After Roswell
Pocket Books London and New York p.73].

While we're in a corner of reality that accepts the reality of the Roswell crash, and its cargo of dead or possibly
living entities, I have to mention the analysis of Polish writer Zbigniew Blania-Bolnar in Alien Encounters for April
1998. Telling us that ...the post-war American Army had at its disposal a considerable number de fusées V2, several V3 and V4 prototypes, and about 30 kugelblitzes of different
kinds, he concludes that the dead entity in the Laredo crash (the Laredo crash?) was a laboratory monkey used
by the Air Force in a secret experiment. And, of course, if a tested kugelblitz crashed at Laredo, then a
similar object could have crashed at Roswell[Blania-Bolnar, Z
(1998) 'Monkey Business' in Alien Encounters April 1998].

None of the suggestions that the Germans back-engineered crashed alien craft pre-date the Lazar and Lear back-engineering stories. Three
more have come to light already. In her book 'Sightings: UFOs' Susan Michaels reports that writer Jan Van Helsing (a
contact of the inner circle of the "Projet Montauk")

décrit la découverte d'une soucoupe écrasée en Forêt Noire en 1936 and says that this technology was taken and
combined with the information the Vril Society had received through channeling and was made into a further project
called the Haunebu[Susan
Michaels (1997) Sightings: UFOs Fireside Books].

There is also a report of a crash in Italy in 1933, the details and information of which were made known to
Mussolini, and which assisted Belluzzo in his design and development ["L'UFO Crash di Mussolini" Unknown
website]. And at the 'Gdansk UFO-Marathon' in October 1997, it was announced that there had been a crash in
Poland in the summer of 1938, in Czernica. Evidence and wreckage recovered from the crash was seized by Nazi Germany
after the invasion of Poland the next year, and the information so gathered was used in the building of the 'Haunebu'
and 'Vril' craft [UFO Magazine May/June
1998 p. 49]. The current popularity of back-engineering is such that I expect to see more such reports.

Soldats anonymes

The term 'unnamed soldier' is one which I - I think - coined to describe the anonymous supposed ex-forces personnel
who purveyed such nonsense about alien abductions and secret military activities over the last decade or so. But the
phenomenon is nothing new, as is evidenced by a few typical reports which I've selected here.

Redfern and Downes have reprinted some accounts volunteered to the US
intelligence services. The nature of intelligence collection is, of course, that it involves collecting every scrap of
nonsense, every wild claim that can be collected, and then sifting through it for what might be important. I don't
think that any of these reports could be said to be important, or even truthful, but it is always useful for authors
to present material like this as 'intelligence reports'. This is, it seems, from a letter from 1947, the writer have
been inspired by early flying saucer accounts

Recently I have heard and read about reports of disc-shaped aircraft or whatever they are, in our Western
regions. They reminded me of a nearly-forgotten incident in Germany, after the war. I report this to you because I
feel this may be of international scope.

My buddy and I went on pass to see a friend of his. One evening the three of us were driving along some back
roads when I sighted strange-looking object in the sky from eight to ten miles to our front and approximately 5,000
feet high. I immediately stopped the jeep for a better look The object rapidly came toward us, descending slowly.
About a mile away it stopped its horizontal motion but continued a slow-oscillating descent similar to a descending
parachute. Then it stopped in a spiral motion.

Immediately I drove to where it had dropped. It took almost five minutes to reach the place but we saw nothing.
After ten minutes of cruising around the area it became too dark to see so we went back to town.

I am not sure my companions saw this because it happened so quickly it could easily have been missed, but I
described what I had seen so vividly that they were as excited as I was . . The locale of this incident was
approximately 120 miles north-west of Ubberbishophiem[Redfern,
N and Downes, J p.16].

What were perhaps two of the most persuasive accounts positing a direct link between the Nazi war machine and
unidentified flying objects came via two individuals interviewed by FBI agents, in 1957 and 1967 respectively.

Dans un cas de 1957, agents at Detroit recorded that they had spoken with a man who
was...

...né le 19 Février 1926, dans l'état de Warsaw (Pologne), and was brought from Poland as a Prisoner of War to
Gut Alt Golssen approximately 30 miles east of Berlin, Germany, en Mai 1942, where he remained until a few weeks
after the end of World War II. According to the man, during 1944, month not recalled, while enroute to work in a
field a short distance north of Gut Alt Golssen, their tractor engine stalled on a road through a swamp area. No
machinery or other vehicle was then visible although a noise was heard described as a high-pitched whine similar to
that produced by a large electric generator.

An 'SS' guard appeared and talked briefly with the German driver of the tractor, who waited five to ten minutes,
after which the noise stopped and the tractor engine was started normally. Approximately 3 hours later in the same
swamp area, but away from the road where the work crew was cutting hay, he surreptitiously, because of the German in
charge of the crew and 'SS' guards in the otherwise deserted area, observed a circular enclosure approximately 100
to 150 yards in diameter protected from viewers by a tarpaulin-type wall approximately 50 feet high, from which a
vehicle was observed to slowly rise vertically to a height sufficient to clear the wall and then to move slowly
horizontally a short distance out of his view, which was obstructed by trees.

'This vehicle, observed from approximately 500 feet, was described as circular in shape, 75 to 100 yards in
diameter, and about 14 feet high, consisting of dark gray stationary top and bottom sections, five to six feet high.
The approximate three foot middle section appeared to be a rapidly moving component producing a continuous blur
similar to an aeroplane propeller, but extending the circumference of the vehicle so far as could be observed. The
noise emanating from the vehicle was similar but of somewhat lower pitch than the noise previously heard. The engine
of the tractor again stalled on this occasion and no effort was made by the German driver to start the engine until
the noise stopped, after which the engine started normally.

Le rapport suivant vient de 1967 :

Le 26 Avril 1967 [le témoin] appeared at the Miami Office and furnished the following information relating to an
object, presently referred to as an unidentified flying object, he allegedly photographed during November, 1944.

Sometime during 1943, he graduated from the German Air Academy and was assigned as a member of the Luftwaffe on
the Russian Front. Near the end of 1944, he was released from this duty and was assigned as a test pilot to a top
secret project in the Black Forest of Austria. During this period he observed the aircraft described above. It was
saucer-shaped, about twenty-one feet in diameter, radio-controlled, and mounted several jet engines around the
exterior portion of the craft. He further described the exterior portion as revolving around the dome in the center
which remained stationary. It was his responsibility to photograph the object while in flight. He asserted he was
able to retain a negative of a photograph he made at 7,000 meters (20,000 feet).

According to him, the above aircraft was designed and engineered by a German engineer whose present whereabouts
is unknown to him. He also assumed the secrets pertaining to this aircraft were captured by Allied Forces. He said
this type of aircraft was responsible for the downing of at least one American B-26 airplane.

He has become increasingly concerned because of the unconfirmed reports concerning a similar object and denials
the United States has such an aircraft. He feels such a weapon would be beneficial in Vietnam and would prevent the
further loss of American lives which was his paramount purpose in contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation[Redfern,
N and Downes, J p.18].

Paul Stonehill of the Russian Ufology Research Centre has presented some unlikely tales from the former Soviet Union,
but few are as dramatic as the anonymous account apparently told to "Konstantin Tiouts, an engineer in Moscow, Russia"
who passed it on to Stonehill. Stonehill is "convinced of the authenticity of the document". The witness - "X" - was
in the Red Army when, in 1941 :

"The Germans took him and his comrades to a POW camp. X was then immersed into living hell. He starved. He was
betrayed. He was dying of typhus, but he managed to survive and attempted an escape. But they caught him and sent
him to Auschwitz. There he was "employed" as a medical orderly, until he again contracted typhus.

X was sent to the ovens. He recalls the nauseating smell of the burning human flesh as he stood in line to be
dispatched into a crema-torium oven. But X did again survive. In August of 1943, X and some other prisoners were
moved to a camp in the vicinity of Peenemunde, where the Nazis' camp was designated as "KZ-A4," and located in
Trassenhede. The camp's purpose was to carry out the programs of the Hochdrukpumpe Project: removal of the
consequences of British bombing raids. Hangman of Auschwitz, SS Brigadenfuhrer Hans Kampler ordered prisoners to be
transferred to the Peenemunde testing grounds. Major General Dehrenberger, head of the testing ground, had little
time for the reconstruction work, and therefore sanctioned the use of concentration camp prisoners.

In September of 1943. X inadvertently became a witness to something that is of great interest to UFO
researchers. X was with a group of prisoners engaged in demolishing a reinforced concrete wall. During the lunch
break, the group was driven away. under guard. However, X remained at the demolition site, because of a dislocated
foot. Later he set the bone himself, but the truck with his fellow prisoners had already left. Sud-denly, four
workers rolled out on a concrete landing strip next to a nearby hangar a weird looking apparatus. X described it as
round in parameter with a drop-shaped cockpit in the center with small inflatable wheels. He said it looked like an
upside down washbasin. After a hand signal from a short, stout man, quiver-ing in the wind, the strange apparatus.
the color of heavy silvery metal, made a hissing sound and took off.

It hovered at an altitude of approximately five meters over the landing strip, the hissing sound reminding X of
a blowlamp. He noted that the outline of the apparatus clearly showed through on its silvery surface. For a short
while the device rocked, like a tilting doll. and then the borders of the outline slowly began to blur as if it were
going out of focus. Then it jumped up sharply like a humming top and gained altitude in a snakelike motion. The
flight, judging by the rocking of the apparatus, advanced erratically. A sudden gust of wind from the Baltic Sea
turned the craft upside down, and it began to lose altitude rather sharply. X was enveloped in a mixture of
smells-burning, hot air and ethyl alcohol. He heard the apparatus impacting with the ground, the crunching and
breaking of compo-nents. It hit the ground not far away from X. Instinctively, the inmate ran toward the crashed
apparatus, thus revealing himself. But he had only one thought in his mind-to try to save the pilot, a human
being...[Stonehill, Paul 'Nazi UFOs:
A Russian Eyewitness' in UFO Magazine (California) Vol 10, No.2, 1995].

And so it goes on, a man who makes Indiana Jones look like Thomas the Tank Engine, and sees flying saucers as well.
Another classic - and amazingly brave except when giving his name - 'unnamed soldier' comes from an Internet posting
also, as often happens, published by Nexus magazine. This is, supposedly, an account of the real secrets of the 'foo
fighters', told by a former Italian Resistance member who became so close to the SAS in Southern Italy from 1943 to
1945 that he was able to see films taken of them shot by allied planes but (and does this seem familiar?) could only
show "Italian researcher Fabio Di Rado" stills taken from these. In a particularly modern twist this nameless witness
did not, however, say that he believed that they were of German manufacture. Instead, he supposedly told Di Rado :

Those machines, if we can call them that, could perform such quick and agile movements that they were unlikely
to have been built by human beings. You can believe me - foo-fighters couldn't be Nazi - otherwise they could have
won the war easily. The more likely hypothesis . . an Air Force coming from other worlds was among us.

The absolute giveaway to this tale lies in the beginning of the account

During the Spring of 1998 I went with another person to an inland village of Sicily to meet an 80-year-old man
who claimed to have some unknown documents about foo fighters.

When we arrived at a farmhouse in the heart of the countryside, our witness showed us into a room which seemed
to be his private study . . We were ordered not to take pictures; we could only make notes. To our disappointment,
we had to accept this. I was given a copy on high-resolution CD-ROM of the pictures and documents that I saw there
in the original version, with some censored parts[Di Rado, Fabio (allegedly) Unattributed
Net posting].

Whatever would we do without the contribution of these rural Italian 80-year-olds and their high resolution CD-ROMs?

Prague-Kbely

Probably the most influential of the original 'unnamed soldier' accounts formed, in the late 1980s, an input to the
mythos which led to the identification of a specific aerodrome as the location for a test flight of a substantial
flying disc. This seems to have come from an anonymous, untested press account, here summarised (in translation) in an
excerpt titled The Reich's Flying Saucers by Manuel Carballal, excerpted from his book Saucers Unveiled!.

"In its February 1989 issue, the German magazine Flugzeug published the following report made by a German
aviation official who, allegedly, been the protagonist of the astonishing sighting involving a "flying saucer" at
the Prag-Gbell (formerly Praha-Kbely) aerodrome in 1943. The controversial report follows:

Place of Sighting: C 14 Flight School at the Prag-Gbell aerodrome. Date of Event August/September 1943,
supposedly on a Sunday (I seem to recall there were no services on that day. The weather was good, dry and sunny.
Kind of Observation: "I was with my flight comrades on the air strip, more precisely, near the school buildings,
some 2000 meters away from the arsenal (located to the extreme left). See adjoining diagram. The device was inside
the hangar: a disk some 5-6 meters in diameter. Its body is relatively large at the center. Underneath, it has four
tall, thin legs. Color: Aluminum. Height: Almost as tall as a man. Thickness: some 30 - 40 cm., with an rim of
external rods, perhaps square orifices. The upper part of the body (almost a third of the total height) was shrunken
over the upper half of the disk. It was flat and rounded. See the attached sketch for the lower half.

Along with my friends, I saw the device emerge from the hangar. It was then that we heard the roar of the
engines, we saw the external side of the disk begin to rotate, and the vehicle began moving slowly and in a straight
line toward the southern end of the field. It then rose almost 1 meter into the air. After moving around some 300
meters at that altitude, it stopped again. Its landing was rather rough. We had to leave the area while some
custodians pushed the vehicles toward the hangar. Later on, the "thing" took off again, managing to reach the end of
the aerodrome this time.

Certainly, even Flugzeug's editors treat the report cautiously: "the device described by these observers is
antithetical to those described by Schreiver, Habermohl, Miethe, and Bellonzo with their vast basic dimensions." And
these German experts cannot be mistaken, since it is known to all of those who are well-versed in aeronautics that
during the history of Nazi aviation at least two circular-wing aircraft were built, and fifteen others were
designed, although there remains the possibility that the object supposedly tested at Prag-Gbell was one of the
prototypes destroyed by the Nazis in order to keep it from falling into Allied hands after the fall of the Third
Reich[Carballal, Manuel (1995) from Saucers Unveiled!].

Autorités de la Terre et d'ailleurs

ASHTAR

Perhaps we should start at the top, in worlds other than ours, and then work our way back, very much, down to the
depths. You can always be sure that wherever two or three are gathered together to listen to channeling, Ashtar will
be there too. Here is a message channeled by 'Lady Nada' in 1996, under the title 'Home Questions From Our Visitors'.
The presentation and spelling are verbatim!

Billy Meier et P'taah

Billy Meier, the Swiss contact and photographer of beings, and craft, from
the Pleiades, has never really convinced me of the objective reality of either his contacts or his photos. I am
certainly not alone in taking that view, and my opinion has not been improved by a conversation that Meier reports in
Volume 1, No 6 of his FIGU Bulletin, published in English in October 1997. A reader - "Til Meisterhans, Germany" -
quotes from a balanced, and quite sceptical, article "article in the January 1980 edition of UFO magazine", and asks :

What should one think of the claim that during World War II the Germans built flying disks, respectively flying
"Foo Fighters," and actually flew them ?

Those of you who are accustomed to the staking of claims for responsibility for anomalous objects and events will not
be surprised to find that Meier cannot resist responding with "information" to which only he has access. Il écrit :

"The following is worth mentioning: According to the Pleiadians/Plejarans, such "Foo Fighters" or disks were
constructed in Germany but were never test flown, let alone put into service. Anyone claiming such flying devices
reached speeds of several thousand kilometers per hour, flew at altitudes of 12000 meters [36000 pieds], and
actually reached Mars, is talking complete nonsense. The authentic story about these events is discussed in the
254th contact conversation with P'taah on November 28, 1995:

"Billy: ...You know, my dear friend, now and then one hears strange things regarding the German flying disks.
Is it true that the Germans actually attempted to fly them, and did the disks reach altitudes of up to 12000
mètres ?

Ptaah: Such claims are absurd. The "Flying Tops," as they were called, were never finalized in Germany.
However, flying disks were eventually built some time later in other countries, e.g., in South America. In the
former Soviet Union and in America attempts were also made to construct such flying devices after pertinent
blueprints fell into the hands of Germanys occupying forces. These blueprints were incomplete in that those
who held the plans needed to input a great deal of effort to construct the flying disks. These units were and are
flown in terrestrial air space only to this day, excluding, of course, a particular group of people in South
America of which you are well aware.

Billy: Can you also tell me whether the blueprints for this type of flying disks secured by the occupying
forces were the same ones you people telepathically transmitted to the Germans via impulses? Who was actually in
charge in Germany?

Ptaah: The transmissions were directed to two men, Schriever et Miethe who, on their own, had drawn up plans
for the "Flying Tops." These blueprints fell into the hands of the Americans and Soviets who began studying and
constructing the units. Also, through theft, the group in South America obtained copies of the same "Flying
Tops."

Billy: One can say with certainty that this group consisted of high-ranking Nazis who fled from Germany after
the war ended and disappeared in South America.

Ptaah: You should not mention any more about this subject.

Billy: Of course not. --- On account of World War II, disk-shaped flying objects were observed also in
Germany, indeed, worldwide . . .

Ptaah: You are correct in this, yes. However, these flying objects were not of terrestrial origin. They
belonged to us and to our allies from the federation.

Billy: This would mean that the flying disks which had been observed were not related to the flying disks,
respectively "Flying Tops" disks, or Foo Fighters, of the Germans. Claims to the contrary, therefore, are actually
foolish assertions by liars, fantasists, and know-it-alls. We've wanted to know about this for a long time.

Ptaah: What I have told you only refers to the Schriever and Miethe Foo Fighters.

Billy: You mean there were others?

Ptaah: Yes, others did exist. However, they were part of a private research program conducted by power hungry
Nazis who drew upon Schriever's and Miethe's blueprints. Efforts to develop and test fly their Foo Fighters were
underway with positive results in Germany at that time.

Billy: By the group now in South America?

Ptaah: Your conjecture is correct.

Billy: And all of this took place right under the nose of the Gestapo?

Ptaah: Many influential members of the Gestapo and its SS-leadership were secret, active participants who
attempted to prevent the rest of the world from gleaning any information about the construction, test flights, and
other matters. When the war ended, they fled Germany and went to South America, taking with them all of their
material and staff. This was not a difficult task, for the Foo Fighters had reached a point were they had the
capability of circling the Earth non-stop and transporting all required personnel and materials to South America
before the Allied Forces could seize them --- or prior to the Allied Forces finding out anything about these
secrets.

Billy: So that's how this all happened. How far did the construction of Schriever's and Miethe's Foo Fighters
progress?

Ptaah: The prototype for the first test flight was available on July 15, 1941. We monitored this very closely.
The Foo Fighter was, however, not constructed according to the data we had transmitted, for we had intentionally
made them ineffective by then, as we could foresee the grave danger they would present for terrestrial mankind.
[Comments by Billy: The Pleiadians/Plejarans transmitted data for the construction of flying disks to the Germans
Schriever and Miethe at the end of the 1920s and beginning of 1930s with the intent to produce an aeronautical
technology that would help prevent the looming warfare conflicts. Unfortunately, they soon realized that this
technology would be used for the exact opposite purposes. For this reason, the Pleiadians/Plejarans counteracted
the undertaking again.] We did not attempt to interfere in the development of Schriever's and Miethe's Foo Fighter
until we suddenly recognized that the units also posed an immense threat to mankind. Once we realized the flight
was going to be a full success, and that mass production of the Foo Fighter would result, we intervened during the
preparations to the first test flight.

This 'dialogue' continues on for some time, until Meier concludes :

...fantastic stories were concocted about flying disks/Foo Fighters which were said to have reached altitudes of
12,000 meters [7_ miles] and Mach 2 or more during their first test flight (which never did take place).
Additionally, a fairy tale tells of the Germans having flown to Mars, landing and performing studies there, so that
they could inhabit the planet one day. Complete nonsense, all of it. Billy [Meier, Billy
and P'taah in FIGU Bulletin Vol1, No 6].

Henry Stephens

Henry Stephens runs the 'German Research Project', and sells copies both of much of the pro-mythos material, and of
more identifiably Nazi and arguably ant--Semitic material. In an article in 'The Probe', referring to the work
supposedly done on a flying disc by A.V. Roe in Canada, he claims that one of the recorded contributors to the project
is shown as "Miethe-Designer 1950(?)" Spinning off into the realms of imagination, Stephens continues :

The reference is obviously about Dr Heinrich (Heinrich? How many names does this man have?) Richard Miethe, who
was the designer and builder of the wartime German saucer project, the V-7. Dr Miethe worked during the war at a
German facility in Breslau, now part of modern Poland. After the war, he was recruited by the Americans and
Canadians to recapitulate his earlier work for Germany in America. Renato Vesco, an Italian engineer who worked with
the Germans during the war and who afterwards held a cabinet position with the Italian government, states that Kahla
was the location where a turbo-jet powered German saucer lifted off in its maiden flight in February of 1945. Vesco
later wrote a book about his experiences, originally titled "Intercept but Don't Shoot"[Stephens, Henry (1998)
'UFOs and the Third Reich' in The Probe Vol 3 #4].

Actually, for all his wild speculation, Vesco never claimed that he was writing from his own experience, but details
like that simply don't bother Stephens, as he spirals off into wild assertions about German free energy, atom bombs,
Vril, Haunebu, Tesla, Montauk, the New World Order and the rest. And all this from the man whose mail-order business
makes him one of the more influential figures in this strange field. His 1998 catalogue outlines the purposes of the
GRP

German Research Project is an organization devoted to distributing information concerning flying saucer-type
devices made by the Germans during the Second World War. Beyond this goal, we also hope to distribute information
concerning other German weaponry and technology, such as free-energy technology, which is still kept secret and
classified by the former Allied Powers. We also hope to explore the reasons for this secrecy. Part of this
technology now comprises the research being done by the Americans at Area 51. Much of this technology was retained
by a German organizations which did not surrender at the cessation of hostilities. These groups and their histories
will be explored also.

The Germans built several types of flying craft which today we would designate "UFOs". Some were conventionally
powered, that is with jet and rocket power, and some were powered electromagnetically. They were built in different
places throughout the greater German Reich by different organizations within the government. They were kept under
the tightest secrecy. Near the close of the War some of these devices were disassembled and transported by U-boat or
simply flown to secure areas outside Germany.

Today, especially since the unification of Germany, more and more information is surfacing concerning these
developments in spite of the efforts by our government and its media to discredit, divert and confuse the issue. For
those individuals new to this topic, we suggest first reading item number 16 in our catalogue, "Introduction To
Secret German Flying Discs Of World War 2" and any title from our video offerings[Stephens,
Henry (1998) German research Project catalogue].

Len Kasten

The incidence of disinformation with relation to Nazi achievements in general, and flying discs in particular, is
high. Here's some parts of an article by "Len Kasten" from the New Age glossy Atlantis Rising. As usual, he adopts
Vesco as an authority, and introduces Viktor Schauberger into the myth. It may be that he actually produces the most
detailed account of disc-propulsion, too!

The more important anti-gravity weapons research was carried on near Prague primarily by Viktor Schauberger and
Richard Miethe. In 1944 Miethe, in cooperation with the Italians, developed the large helium powered V-7 and the
small one-man Vril models which achieved a speed of 2,900 km/hr in flight tests . . Captain Hans Kohler developed
the Hanibu 2 with a diameter of 25 metres which carried a complete flight crew and was powered by a simple
electrogravitation motor called the Kohler Converter...

Kasten describes the (totally fictional) Kugelblitz as an "explosive gas weapon", having :

a 50-50 mixture of butane and propane, which was ignited by the exhaust of the bombers . . direct gyroscopic
stabilisation, television-controlled flight, vertical take-off and landing, jam-free radio control combined with
radar blinding, infrared search 'eyes', electrostatic weapon firing, hyper-combustible gas combined with a total
reaction turbine, and last, but not least, anti-gravity flight technology. This was the incredible Kugelblitz or
'lightning ball'. If it had emerged even six months earlier, could the war have turned out differently? We will
never know, because by this time the Allied armies were rapidly converging on Berlin. So the Kugelblitz puffed out a
formation of bombers, and flew off into history - or did it ?[Kasten, Len Op cit].

David Hatcher-Childress

Those of you familiar with the fields of both pseudo-science and pseudo-history - and pseudo pretty much anything,
really - will already know of the boundless imagination of Hatcher-Childress. In his publication 'Man-Made UFOs 1944 -
1994, 50 Years of Suppression', by "Renato Vesco and David Hatcher-Childress", Hatcher-Childress actually republishes
the whole of Vesco's first book (without really making clear that's what it is), adds some early UFO photos that might
look like the ones he appears to believe were built in Germany during the war, and speculations of his own. His
"Summary of the Claims and Evidence" has some familiar elements...

After various experimental prototypes, including the rocket powered Miethe and Schriever discs, production began
on the small ten meter diameter interceptor-fighters of the Vril series. The larger Haunibu series began with the 25
meter Haunibu 1 & 2. These craft had canons mounted underneath and were designed as "tank Killers".

The 74 meter Haunibu-3, designed as an anti-shipping craft for use over long distances, was actually built and
tested. It had inflatable rubber cushions on the underside for landing. The 300 meter Haunibu-4 was on the design
board for interplanetary travel. It was disc shaped and could also carry several of the smaller Vril craft. Also
reportedly in the design stage was an immense 330 meter cigar-shaped battleship.

Towards the end of the war, the Germans had developed interplanetary craft with no moving parts which were
capable of going to the Moon or even Mars[Hatcher-Childress, D and Vesco, R (1994)
Man-Made UFOs 1944-1994 - 50 Years of Suppression Adventures Unlimited Press
1994 p. 366].

In 'The Thesis of This Book', he also asserts that :

Some German divisions removed themselves to South America and Antarctica in the few months and weeks before the
end of the war . . the Americans, British and Russians began to build test discoid aircraft in the late 40s and 5Os.
Isolated German pockets in South America have intense UFO activity. Antarctic bases are probably vacated or captured
by Americans and Russians. Today, a seven-story or more underground base run jointly by America and Russia exists at
the South Pole[Hatcher-Childress, D and Vesco,
R (1994) Man-Made UFOs 1944-1994 - 50 Years of Suppression Adventures Unlimited
Press 1994 p. 370].

I have no idea whether Hatcher-Childress actually believes this nonsense. I suppose he must, because otherwise he'd
be knowingly misleading his many readers. Unfortunately, this concoction of a book has created something of a new
generation of believers, including the UK author Alan Baker. In spite of his publisher's confident assertion of his
"meticulous research" for his book 'Invisible Eagle', Baker accepted Hatcher-Childress without question, and now a new
readership is stuck with Vesco developing flying discs at Lake Garda and investigating UFOs for the Italian Air
Ministry, the reality of the Feuerball and Kugelblitz, and the top-secret Projekt Saucer. One man's research is
another man's trip to the bookshop.

Vanguard Science/KeelyNet/Al Pinto

Any Internet search for 'Nazi UFOs' and similar subjects is likely to produce links to material by "Al Pinto" or
"Tal", apparently "Sponsored by Vanguard Sciences, PO Box 1031, Mesquite, TX 75150, USA" which depends heavily on the
article written under Vesco's name in 'Argosy'. [66] Additional material re Nikola Tesla and Viktor Schauberger is
added to quotes from Vesco and Lusar, particularly a claim that Schauberger had developed the 'Schriever, Habermohl,
Miethe and Bellonzo Flying Disc' at Malthausen Concentration Camp, using prisoners to do the work. I still don't
really know quite who "Al Pinto" and "Tal" are, or what the underlying intention of 'Vanguard Sciences' may be. The
coincidence of the name 'Vanguard' with a prominent neo-Nazi organisation has been mentioned to me on several
occasions.

I did receive, through a friend who had published some earlier findings on Nazi UFOs, a message from a Jack Veach who
said (inter alia) that :

"Mr McClure makes some very positive statements debunking a great deal of untruths about Nazi UFOs, however I
would like to offer him a website and an email whereby he might find more information about Mr Renate Vesco.

I am a member of Vanguard Science, not Vangard Science, as he has listed. This is a civilian group of folk, here
in the Dallas-Ft Worth area that are open-minded about the verity of science and have taken it upon ourselves to
study Tesla, Keely, and a host of others we feel have been given the short-end of the stick with respect to
technology and applications thereof.

Mr Jerry Decker and Mr Chuck Henderson could much better avail you of information about Mr Vesco and his work. I
personally had an English translation of one of his works I gave away about ten years ago pursuant the German
V-7.

My father and his C.O. both saw Foo Fighters over Europe during WWII, so that much is real. Neither my dad nor
Col. Lasly knew anything about UFOs, nor had any interest in them. What they did say was that between the Foo
Fighters and the Me-262s they encountered, they felt they would be killed before the war was over in Europe.

I hope that will clear some things up for Mr McClure with respect to Vanguard Science and Mr Vesco and hopefully
all of us can clear the riddle of the Nazi UFOs from all the smoke and mirrors that unfortunately come to the fore
on something of this nature."

My friend sent an e-mail back to Mr Veach, expressing my interest in receiving further information about Vesco, but
no response was forthcoming. The post-mortem involvement of both mainstream and fringe scientists in the development
of flying discs has raised a variety of names including Marconi, Einstein, Tesla, Schauberger, Keely and others. I am unaware of any real evidence that
Schauberger worked at Malthausen using slave labour. If that suggestion is no more than wishful thinking, then I am
left wondering why anybody should wish for it.

Interestingly, there is circumstantial evidence that at least one of the V-7 project aircraft was prototyped.
According to the researcher and author Mark Ian Birdsall, several projects
involving a circular-wing aircraft were conceived during the war, the most elaborate of which was constructed by Dr
Richard Miethe at facilities in Breslau (Wroclaw), Poland, and in Prague. A small prototype was rumoured to have
flown over the Baltic Sea in January 1943, and two full-scale aircraft with a diameter of 135 feet were eventually
built. Also, reports Birdsall, another V-7 project was a 'spinning saucer',
based on helicopter principles, about 35 feet in diameter, designed by Rudolf Schriever, a small prototype of which
was allegedly first flown in 1943 [Timothy
Good (1998) Alien Base Century London p.23].

Good's reference for these comments is given as "Birdsall, Mark Ian, Flying Saucers of the Third Reich: The Legacy of
Prague-Kbely (pending publication). That book has not, as I write, yet been published.

En, je pense, 1988, Birdsall publie le livret malheureusement intitulé La
solution ultime qui, en seulement 29 pages, présente 3 images différentes de Hitler. It also includes copies of
US intelligence documents reporting the newspaper accounts of George Klein's claims of the test-flight on 14 February
1945, diagrams of assorted Miethe-Schreiver-Bellonzo discs, and some probably avoidably uncritical material about
'secret' Antarctic exploration and the escape of Nazis from Germany at the end of the war. [68] In 1992, in Vol.7 No.4
of the US 'UFO Magazine', he wrote an article titled 'Nazi Secret Weapon - Foo Fighters of WWII', and included
illustrations of a supposed 'Schriever-Habermohl' disc. [Mark Birdsall (1992) 'Nazi Secret Weapon - Foo
Fighters of WWII' in UFO Magazine (California) Vol 7 #4] The introduction to the article says that Birdsall
"just completed a hefty manuscript which enlarges considerably the scope of the available source material". It would
be interesting to see what material Birdsall has found, and whether his views might be influenced by what is being
published in this piece.

Ernst Zundel/Mattern Friedrich

Ernst Zundel, également connu sous le nom de Mattern Friedrich (le nom sous lequel il écrivit UFOs - Nazi Secret
Weapon?[Friedrich,
M (1975) UFOs - Nazi Secret Weapon? Samisdat Toronto]) et Christof Friedrich (how he has signed the copy of
that book which I have) has had considerable involvement in the distribution of material regarded as Holocaust
revisionism. He has often been described as an anti-Semite.

Zundel sustained the 'Nazi UFO' myth through much of the 1970s, presenting a mixture of Lusar, Schauberger, and the
'Hitler survived/Nazi Antarctica' material, illustrated with vague photos of uncertain provenance, and the usual
diagrams from the European press. He seems to have been unaware of Vesco, but could well have introduced the idea that
Schauberger worked actively on disc development with slave labour. While not doubting the underlying sincerity of
Zundel in promoting German wartime achievements, a report of comments he allegedly made to Frank Miele may well
reflect his attitude to his readers. Miele cite Zundel disant :

Whatever else may be true of Zundel, I think I can safely say that his work has no factual contribution to make to
the 'Nazi UFO' debate. But that doesn't mean that he hasn't influenced its development, or that others less canny than
he, but with similar beliefs, have not involved themselves in the subject because they believe what he said.

Commentaires et renseignement officiels

The publication of Lusar's book in 1957 not surprisingly provoked both military and
intelligence interest. From the New Britain Herald for Thursday, 14 Mars 1957 comes a media-friendly response to the publicity the book had been given.

Un rapport daté du 29 Mars 1957, déclassifié en 1978, de Robert E. O'Connor de l'Air Technical Intelligence Center au Directeur du Renseignement est largement
plus spécifique. It has become very common in the past few years to publish 'intelligence' documents on the pretext
that they all have equal value, but this report records the outcome of genuine research by those competent to conduct
it. I've quote the relevant sections - perhaps it isn't too surprising that those who want us to believe in the Saucer
Builders haven't given it much publicity!

There seems to be no reason to believe that these comments were at any stage designed to be misleading, or were based
on inadequate or inaccurate research. What the Air Technical Intelligence Center found seems to have been the truth:
that there were no high-performance flying discs, and that nobody had a clue about 'Miethe', whatever his first name
may have been, becoming involved in disc or rocket development anywhere, at any time.

CORE 10. Erreurs et fantaisies

Ufologists - especially, I suspect, those who want to believe that the Nazis flew high-performance UFOs - can take
life dreadfully seriously. Unfortunately, this failing extends to not being able to spot a genuine mistake, or
recognise a fantasy or a fiction that was never intended to be anything but that. Two classic blunders involved taking
Lusar far too seriously, and undermining the credibility of otherwise serious and respectable books.

German Jet Genesis

The first is in a Jane's publication - a publisher with a fine reputation of dealing with all kinds of arms and
armaments. However, in German Jet Genesis by David Masters, published in 1982, the author not only reprints Lusar's
claims re flying performance, but also what appear to be pre-Harbinson details from 'Brisant'. Particularly absurd are
the three apparently freehand drawings, depicting a 'Miethe flying disc', a 'Schriever flying disc' and a 'Schriever
and Habermohl flying disc. Masters sets out some of the traditional array of excuses for the absence of evidence,
saying :

Information on this aspect of German jet aircraft development is very sketchy. the project was always highly
secret, and documents that may have existed were probably either destroyed, lost or taken by the Russians when the
war ended. A last possibility is that the Allies discovered Schriever's work and considered it too important to
reveal[Masters,
David (1982) German Jet Genesis Jane's London p.135].

but in reality I'd guess this was one of the publisher's most embarrassing moments.

Robert Jungk

Jungk's 1956 book Brighter than a Thousand Suns was first published in English in 1958. An impressive history of the
development of the atomic bomb, it contains (at page 87 in my 1965 Pelican edition) a curious footnote, which has been
used to add credibility to the 'Saucer Builder' legends. Referring to a sentence in the text where Jungk says "The
indifference of Hitler and those about him to research in natural science amounted to positive hostility", the
footnote says

The only exception to the lack of interest shown by authority was constituted by the Air Ministry. The Air Force
research workers were in a peculiar position. They produced interesting new types of aircraft such as the Delta
(triangular) and 'flying discs'. The first of these 'flying saucers', as they were later called - circular in shape,
with a diameter of some 45 yards - were built by the specialists Schriever, Habermohl and Miethe. They were first
airborne on 14 February 1945 over Prague and reached in three minutes a height of nearly eight miles. they had a
flying speed of 1250 mph which was doubled in subsequent tests. It is believed that after the war Habermohl fell
into the hands of the Russians. Miethe developed at a later date similar 'flying saucers' at A V Roe and Company for
the United States[Jungk,
Robert (1965) Brighter Than A Thousand Suns Pelican Middlesex].

It is clear that this footnote derives from Lusar, and should therefore not be taken as true. I note that the
original book was written in 1956 and I wonder whether, in fact, the footnote was added by someone other than Jungk at
the translation stage in 1957 or 1958. It would be interesting to know whether the original ,Heller als tausend Sonnen
(Alfred Scherz Verlag 1956) had this footnote, too. Either way, Jungk - of whose book the Spectator said :

"He tells the story brilliantly; no intelligent man or woman can afford to miss it... Should be compulsory
reading for every budding scientist in every sixth form and every university in the world" may be forgiven this
lapse, which should not be exploited in order to provide support for the nonsense that Lusar concocted.

La légende Miethe

at the close of the war, Walter Miethe went to the US with Wernher von Braun, Dornberger, and hundreds of other
members of the Peenemunde rocket programme . . . Miethe, though initially working under Wernher von Braun for the
United States' first rocket centre in the White Sands Prov-ing Ground, New Mexico, joined the A.V. Roe (AVRO-Canada)
aircraft company in Malton, Ontario, re-portedly to continue work on disc-shaped aircraft, or flying saucers just as
Habermohl was thought to be doing with the Russians
[Harbinson op cit].

These assertions, presumably based on Lusar's, seem to have led to the development of an impressive, but entirely
false, history for the elusive Miethe, covering many years. I think we can now dispose of them. . . .

Tim Matthews, dans son livre UFO Revelation, refers to the :

"three years of painstaking research by UK astronomy, aviation and photographic specialist Bill Rose, which
included on-site research in Germany, Canada and the USA . . he was able to discover that Dr Walter Miethe who all
sources agree was involved with Schriever, Klaus Habermohl and Guiseppe Belluzzo (an Italian engineer) had been the
director of the saucer programme at two facilities located outside Prague. In May 1945, after testing of the
prototype had taken place, both Miethe and Schriever were able to flee in the direction of allied forces .

Rose learned not only that test-flights had taken place but that there was film footage of them . . Rose was
shown some stills taken from the original 16mm film and, given his expert photo-technical background, concluded,
after careful consideration, that this was probably real and historical footage . .

We know a little more about Dr Miethe. One of the important pieces of information came in the form of a rare
group photograph showing various young German scientists in 1933. The photograph shows Werner von Braun and Walter
Miethe (or Richard Miethe - different sources mention different first names). It would seem that these two knew each
other well[Matthews,
Tim (1999) UFO Revelation - The Secret Technology Exposed Blandford London].

Rose and Matthews claimed that Miethe worked with von Braun in 1933, and that the photo provided by the person who
responded to an advert Rose had placed showed them together with other rocket scientists in that year. Fortunately,
this is a well-researched and well-recorded period of history, and it should be no more difficult to find records of
Miethe than it is that of von Braun. Indeed, von Braun was born in 1912 and if Miethe was 40 in 1952, they should have
been absolute contemporaries. The Rocket and the Reich by Michael J. Neufeld [Neufeld, Michael J (1995) Peenemunde and the Coming of
the Ballistic Missile Era Harvard University Press Massachusetts] covers this period, and von Braun's
activities, in detail, as well as detailing rocket and 'secret weapon' development right through to the end of the
war. Yet it makes no mention at all of Miethe (Walter or Richard), Habermohl, Schreiver, or Belluzzo, Klein or Klaas.
Nor, for that matter, does Philip Henshall in Vengeance - Hitler's Nuclear Weapon Fact or Fiction [Henshall, Philip
(1995) Vengeance - Hitler's Nuclear Weapon Fact or Fiction Alan Sutton], which covers a similar range in rather
less detail. You might think that these people never existed or that, if they did, they played no part in the
development of any German flying disc.

Since his book was published I've spoken to Tim Matthews about this matter, and corresponded with Bill Rose. I don't
think either would disagree if I were to say to that it seems that, while Rose is not in a position to disclose
details of the elderly West German from whom it appears that both the photos and the surrounding information derived,
those photos did not depict a craft in flight or, indeed, fully constructed. In view of the 1952 'France-Soir'
interview, the 1957 intelligence report, and the complete absence of anyone called Miethe in the mainstream history of
rocketry, I think we can safely set any contrary evidence aside. In view of the considerable influence 'UFO
Revelation' and its effective and communicative author have had, particularly in the USA, I hope that the full story
behind Rose's source(s) will be made public. In the meantime, if what was published wasn't exactly a mistake, it may
be fair to say that somebody got hold of the wrong end of the stick, but I'm not sure who was holding the stick at the
time.

Balls

I strongly suspect that a supposed AP release of December 1944 about the Germans having "a secret weapon in keeping
with the Christmas season" which "resembles the glass balls which adorn Christmas trees", "are coloured silver and are
apparently transparent", and "have been seen hanging in the air over German territory, sometimes singly, sometimes in
clusters", was actually a light-hearted bit of fun designed for Christmas. The phenomenon described certainly doesn't
bear any resemblance at all to the 'foo fighter' reports.

This item was apparently only published - in similar but not identical versions - in the South Wales Argus for 13
December 1944 and the New York Herald Tribune for 2 January 1945. Any competent historian will be aware that in
wartime, censorship ensures that the existence of mysterious, enemy secret weapons is not announced by AP, and
published openly by the newspapers of combatant nations. Mainstream history has taken no notice of these reports, and
in the absence of any evidence to the contrary I suggest they were no more than slight, seasonal jokes, published by
just two newspapers out of the thousands that, if the information really derived from a serious AP report, would have
taken it up.

Of course, there is much more to investigate, particularly the links between the 'flying discs' and the supposed
survival of the Third Reich in - or under - South America and the Antarctic. Le livre de Joscelyn Goodwin,
Arktos[Godwin Joscelyn (1996) Arktos - The Polar Myth
Adventures Unlimited Illinois] has set out some useful information in this respect, but misses the drama of the
creation of New Berlin, the trips to the Moon and Mars, the belief in the dramatic US-Nazi battles in Operation
Highjump, and the links that those making these claims may have with particular cultural and political groups.

I don't want to try to direct the responses that readers may have to the material I've put together here. My opinions
of fascism and those who use their authority - real or false - to mislead others for their own profit or other
advantage are pretty obvious. I hope that readers will also have appreciated that I have tried to distinguish between
material that harms, and that which does not. However, I'd like to set out a couple of points that arise from the
inconsistencies between the mythos version of history, the 'consensus' version of history, and the
somewhere-in-between history of ufology.

Paperclip was, if nothing else, carefully organised. It was a secret
operation, being run for high stakes, and there is no reason to believe that it failed to target the best and most
skilled scientists available. In the field of rocketry, certainly, it succeeded, laying the foundations for the US
space program in general, and the US successes of the Sixties in particular.

Most detailed Nazi UFO accounts refer to Operation Paperclip, using it to support the argument for the extent of
German wartime technical achievements with flying discs by implying that the development of US technology - up to and
including the present generation of 'Stealth' aircraft - depended on the importation and input of German scientists.
Yet the very German 'scientists' who were supposedly responsible for the development of those wonderful discs seem to
have been completely ignored by Paperclip, and to have ended up in inappropriate employment in Europe, with only
popular newspapers showing an interest in their skills. Either the saucer builders were also 'the men that Paperclip
forgot', or because there were no saucers, Paperclip didn't make a mistake in not taking them off to the USA.

Débuts de l'ufologie

In a recent disagreement I had with Tim Good and his publishers over the
provenance of photographs printed in his book Alien Base [Good op cit Various illustrations],
I raised what I thought was a valid point. Many of the photographs - the ones which didn't depict faked alien corpses
- were from Fifties ufology, supposedly taken by George Adamski, Paul Villa, Daniel Fry, Howard Menger and Hugo Vega. These have
attracted both belief and ridicule over the years, and Good had not addressed various doubts about their provenance, such as possible
associations with kitchen equipment, string, the use of perspective to make small objects look larger, and the simple
tactic of throwing things in the air.

Tim Good agreed, honourably, to have these photographs examined by a university
expert using modern techniques at his own expense, and although hampered by the copies being some generations from the
original, these reports were published. The expert was not convinced that the photos depicted independently airborne
craft of the size and at the distance claimed by the photographer.

The point I had raised was whether, even if the photographs showed no evidence of deliberate faking, it was likely
that these craft - mostly chubby, awkward, tinny and lacking any visible method of propulsion or steering - were
actually aerodynamically viable. Could they fly over short distances here on Earth, let alone between planets in our
solar system or beyond? As it happened, there was sufficient doubt about the provenance of the photos, and the reality
of what they purported to show, that the wider question didn't have to be answered, but I'd suggest that the answer
should be a resounding 'No'. If these craft were real, and of the size and in the place that those who took the
photographs suggested, then there isn't the slightest chance that they had flown from Venus or Mars, let alone any
further away. They couldn't. They look as though they'd been made out of the bits left over in the average suburban
garage, and that they would fall to bits if the string holding them up were to break: whether that's what they
actually were you might well ask, but I couldn't possibly comment.

An alternative explanation has been given for the inadequacy of these 'craft'. It's always lurked somewhere in the
background of extra-terrestrial ufology, as a fall-back position to take where interplanetary flight seems a deeply
unlikely explanation for a UFO photograph, but nobody wants, or dares, to cry 'fake'. In recent years this second-best
explanation has been adapted into an explanation of choice, eagerly adopted by David Hatcher-Childress and others, in
books and in videos. No longer are these clumsy aggregations of household waste even supposed to be extra-terrestrial
craft. Instead, they are prime evidence of the might of Nazi UFO technology, either imported by the US after the war,
or by the Russians, who were using them for reconnaissance or, even more wonderfully, by the Nazis themselves, flying
to prove that the Third Reich never died, but lives and fights on in secret bases in South America or Antarctica. As
you can imagine, if there was no wonderful flying disc technology in Germany during the war, then it could never have
been exported. And if that was the case, then fakes is pretty well all the close-up photos of that era could have
been.

That said, one hopefully simple conclusion - moral, even - does come to mind. Ufology has always sought for
respectability. It has sought scientific respectability and, trying to explain away the absurdly sudden beginning it
had in 1947, has also looked for a history going back before that date. The 'foo fighter' material is certainly
interesting in this respect, but those sightings bear no real resemblance to the craft of early ufology: I'd suggest
that for research purposes it should be regarded as an entirely separate subject from the tinny close-up saucers and
Nordic occupants of just a few years later. If my approach to the wartime flying disc material is correct, then 1947
looks more sudden - and inexplicable - than ever, and the contact experience even more isolated. Far from achieving
any kind of respectability, by accepting so readily the existence of high-performance wartime German flying discs
without, with a handful of honourable exceptions, bothering to make even the simplest of enquiries, ufology has again
made itself look amateur, gullible, and easily manipulated. So no change there, then.